Goodwork Almanac

Tag: stoicism

  • Farmstrong

    Farmstrong

    When personal development is discussed, strength is often one of the first attributes people desire. Perhaps they feel physically weak or ineffectual, bullied by others who are bigger and physically stronger. They want to get stronger so that they never have to feel so small again. Others do not feel emotionally strong, they feel they cannot speak up for themselves or endure the burden of everyday obligations. They ask for strength so they can make it through another day. If we are to carry on, we must ask ourselves what it means to be strong.

    In our age, virtues and values are interpreted through a warped lens. The virtues or values themselves may be good and useful but because they are distorted by misunderstandings, they are turned into useless and harmful versions of themselves. Through this lens, values such as youth, productivity, efficiency, and detachment are championed to a degree that causes many imbalances.

    Our fixation on youth has made us neglect our health and longevity, as we try to continue to live as children in a dreamy and consequence-free lifestyle. Even when people try to mimic longevity, they pursue it in a way that they may achieve eternal youth. An entire industry of health gadgets promises to make us ‘age backwards’ when we could simply age gracefully, try to live long and happy lives. Many feel the push and the urge that they must continue the creativity and productivity of their youth long after middle age, neglecting the natural limits of our capacities or the developed talents we might otherwise put to use such as wisdom and guidance. And our emotions are not contemplated, integrated, or healthfully processed but shut down, ignored, and treated as inconvenient. This often leads to emotional outbursts that are far worse and more ill-conceived than the original emotions. I think of my coworker making fun of the younger generation for crying while he walks around work berating people and having angry meltdowns every other day. So much better!

    I do feel there are values here that are worth embracing, if only we can find a healthy way to do it. Youth is something that can be celebrated, and we could also put more effort towards navigating the loss of youth and the gain of experience, wisdom, and self-control that comes with later ages.

    Longevity is a wonderful goal. I would love to live a long, happy, and productive life. But it would be unwise to try to remain twenty forever, not to mention creepy and unnatural. Instead, we should encourage the development of our personalities and goals as we age, trying to live healthy lives of connection and value, until we can become the wisdom-bearers, the old sages, the elders.

    Finally, it is wise to learn the nature of our emotions so that we do not let them overwhelm and control our behavior. This is the main tenet of Stoicism, and it has nothing to do with shutting down, ignoring, or rejecting emotion but learning about yourself through emotion, accepting them when they arise, and maintaining your sense of what you can control so that your emotions do not control you.

    In any of these cases, strength is asked of us. Physical, emotional, and relational strength is developed throughout life, slowly, sometimes painfully, as we work to become the truest versions of ourselves and bear witness to others becoming themselves too.

    Photo by Elkhan Ganiyev on Pexels.com

    There is a certain archetype that comes to mind when I imagine the abundant, healthy life of a fully formed individual: the farmer. I imagine them as a burly and stout-hearted person, strong grip, calm eyes under a discerning brow. They are quiet, but their intelligence is demonstrated in the deftness of their movements and the skill of their craft. They do their speaking with action rather than words. When they do speak, each word is dense with meaning. Words carry a premium; words are slow and burdensome compared to the act itself. There are years of setbacks and resilience in their eyes, you can count them like rings on a tree. And after every catastrophe, their strong hands pick up their well-worn tools and begin again.

    Physical Health and Longevity

    The nature of the farmer’s work tends to be physical. There are chores enough to keep the farmer occupied as long as they’d like. Often their work can overtake their personal lives. This is where a healthy relationship to one’s work and person calling can come in handy. We want to be profitably and meaningfully employed but losing health and enjoyment from overwork is entirely possible and should be avoided.

    Photo by ahmad dian fitrah jamaluddin on Pexels.com

    Having regular, physical movement throughout the day keeps the body healthy. Many people today have sedentary jobs or professions and do not opt into a regular exercise routine. Those with physical jobs accomplish both the demands of their work and also the demands of the physical body – to move, and keep practiced in movement, for as long as one can.

    One of the primary goals of goodwork is to ‘Stay as strong as you can, as long as you can.’

    Farm chores also tend to include a lot of low-impact movements paired with higher-repetition strength movements and occasionally the high-effort compound movement such as picking up something extremely heavy or lifting something above one’s head. If these movements are done with a mind toward joint care and proper form, they are the building blocks of a healthfully aging body which retains much of its strength and endurance while sedentary bodies tend to wither, break down, and accumulate compounding injuries.

    There is much information available to us now that suggests the importance of exercising our muscles as a practice throughout life in order to improve the condition of our later years. Developing our muscles through vigorous exercise improves four areas that people tend to struggle with as they age.

    First, it will help with balance. Imbalance leads to falls and slips and the injuries from these falls can compound over time to worsen the condition of our lives. The skeletal muscles, their strength and agility, as well as the strength of our core muscles, assist us in keeping balance.

    Secondly, it helps with our hearts and circulatory systems. Many people will have issues with their heart and arteries as a result of sedentary living and diet issues. Regular exercise helps prevent heart disease and arteriosclerosis, the hardening of the arteries over time.

    Third, it helps us keep stronger bones. When the body is sedentary, the bones may become weak and brittle which will lead to breaks. These injuries lead to more sedentary living, in order to give them a chance to heal, but may also affect our mobility and strength forever after. Lifting weights and exercising muscles helps to strengthen our bones and keep them strong even as we age.

    Last but not least, regular exercise helps us keep our minds sharp, improves and maintains cognition. Many people will struggle with routine cognitive issues such as memory degradation and slowed processing time as they age. Some will struggle with more severe cognitive decline such as dementia. Regular exercise can lessen the likelihood that we experience these effects and diseases. These four areas (balance, cardiovascular health, bone density, and cognitive health) are all improved by an active lifestyle integrated with strength movements that prioritize proper form and joint health.

    The kind of physical work I am describing can destroy a person if they are not careful and do not have a mind for their limitations and recovery. There are countless people who have neglected their limits only to injure themselves with recurring stresses, do not pay heed to bodily or mental recovery, and as a result push themselves into a state of decrepitude and decay. A life without boundaries is self-destruction. I have worked with many people, especially in the trades, who have pushed themselves and others beyond their limits and have suffered setbacks and injuries as a result. This kind of behavior inspires negative associations with work and unhealthy relationships with each other, as well as an unhealthy relationship to one’s body.

    Photo by Ebahir on Pexels.com

    Community and Connection

    A farmer’s lifestyle can be said to contain two important relational elements. Those are strong individualism and connected community life. There are many opinions floating around that overemphasize the importance of rugged individualism to the point of isolation. And there are many opinions that disparage individualism to the point of neglecting individual development and expression entirely, preferring to focus on the ideas of community life and collective markers of well-being.

    But what is the community made up of? Individuals. And how can the individual exist without the support and care and connection of the love of their community? You cannot separate the two. If the community is made up of people who refuse to take individual responsibility for their lives, disconnection and chaos ensue. If the community is made up of people who refuse to acknowledge their connection to community members in mutually beneficial relationships, everyone becomes isolated, ineffectual, and hollow.

    Of all the farmstrong people I have met, they have done well to develop both the attribute of their individuality and the deep connection that comes with community-making.

    Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh on Pexels.com

    Their work is reflective of this. Each farm is unique and specific, it must be worked in a certain way and it is not often that the same methods will apply to many different areas of the land. They must take responsibility for their work, which they do in direct relationship to the land they inhabit. At times it can seem the working farm is isolated or remote, being tucked away into foothills and valleys far from the bustle of the cities and towns, traditionally. But the farmer balances this when they come into town to sell or trade their goods. They must maintain this connection if any of their work is to be meaningful and productive. And often they create a niche on their own land to host visitors, helpers, family, and neighbors.

    I lived and worked on several farms in my early twenties, traveling through Europe and the northern United States. Each farm had deep connection to its community and to the other farmers in their area. On an olive farm in Italy, we hosted a dinner for thirty people working and living on neighboring farms. They each brought their specialty olives, a recipe they each inherited and loved from generations past, and we shared in the moment and the connection of our work together.

    We walked up the hill to town where they were having an autumn harvest festival. The hunters brought wild boar, the farmers brought their food, the locals brought homemade wine. We sang and danced in tents in the town’s parks and we stumbled back to our beds around nightfall. On a goat farm in France, we made cheese and hosted cheese-making classes as well as cheese tasting events. We slept in a hut folded into the treeline, warmed by a little stove at its center.

    Each day was about meeting the current task in a personal, direct way, whether it was collecting the olives or pounding fence posts. It was also about finding connection and harmony within the community we wanted to cultivate.

    Photo by Mark Stebnicki on Pexels.com

    Mental Health

    The nature of the farmer’s outlook tends to be, consciously or unconsciously, practical and persistent. They work with the ground and are, by no coincidence, well-grounded. It is the reality of their work that they must accept unforeseen circumstances and work to overcome them or at the very least to endure them. I think this can be a unique outlook, given these various forces.

    The farmstrong know that they must contend with reality and so their fantasy worlds are tempered by the capacity of their work to bring things out of their imagination. Their continuance in their daily chores and projects suggests a vote of confidence in the future, though they are more than willing to embrace the uncertainty of their lives and profession, with which they are painfully familiar.

    Photo by Makara Eam on Pexels.com

    Experience of the disappointments of life’s endeavors do not embitter them towards honest effort; in fact, honest effort is quite often their guiding light and daily devotional, it imbues all their work with ritual goodness and attention, and the firsthand experience of disappointment cultivates a healthy detachment from the painful images of expectations. ‘Oh, well…’ might be a common refrain of the farmstrong.

    I have often found myself enamored with people of this character, who can so easily have faith in tomorrow that they may content themselves with the honest work of today, this moment. It can be somewhat more common to see the unrelenting plans, schemes, and hollow wishes of those who are resigned from daily life and content themselves with fruitless daydreaming. All dreams and no delivery. I have certainly found myself distracted by endless waves of planning, rather than returning to the humbling act of daily work.

    Photo by Beyza Yalu00e7u0131n on Pexels.com

    I have often thought of the farmer as the Stoic ideal. Not all farmers are like this, of course, but the ideal itself is the absolute picture of resilience, courage, wisdom, and virtue. After getting a taste of life on a working farm, you begin to understand why this would be the place to create that tempered steel of pure stoicism – the chores must be done no matter the weather, no matter the circumstances, no matter the mood. Whether it is freezing winter or pouring rain or gale force winds, the livestock must be fed and watered, the work must continue to get done. Whether it is a little Russian babushka tending to the cows or a goatherd in Greece walking the hills and the fields, there are those whose work has polished them against the difficulty of life and as a result they exude a strength and endurance that is without comparison. They may never set out to fulfill this ideal of virtue, and they may never put a word to paper about it in order to describe their process or their thoughts, and yet they have embodied this philosophy better than the most prominent minds of antiquity.

    A word on Stoicism, a sometimes-misunderstood term. I have occasionally seen Stoicism portrayed as the rejection or suppression of emotion, perhaps an enthusiastic withdrawal from life, or a cold and uncaring posture taken with an attitude of disregard. After reading some of the classic Stoics, such as Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca, one may come to know the nuance of this philosophy better and to consider it a great deal more relevant than other systems of thought from ancient history.

    It is not about stifling or repressing emotion but consciously approaching emotion in a way that allows us to contend with it. When we meet with our emotions in a calm and level-headed manner, we can better understand where they come from, what they are trying to express, and how best to integrate them in a way that does not disturb our lives. It is also not about withdrawing from the necessary actions of life but rather focusing on what we can control and engaging in these things with virtue, rather than losing ourselves to the uncertainty and doubt of events and circumstances entirely outside of our influence, which may pull our valuable time and energy away from constructive and useful action. It is about engaging with life and committing to life in a way that we are prepared for setbacks and inconveniences and whatever else fate may send our way.

    Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

    One may encounter difficulties but with the right practices they may work through these difficulties without adding a greater burden with their own unhelpful behaviors. Surely, we have all been in a difficult spot before with someone who would not stop complaining, making negative predictions, or refused to work through the issue. This not only doesn’t help the situation but makes it much worse.

    Conclusion

    These attributes do not have to belong to the farmer alone, of course. Anyone of any background can develop these habits and channel these characteristics through their own work and relationships in order to build resilience, strength, and connection into their lives. That is the aim of my sharing these thoughts, and my continuing to write on subjects related to the farmstrong idea in the future.

    I find that there are many misconceptions about strength, stoicism, individuality, and work in general. Useful ideas are co-opted by the irresponsible and the immature every day, so I think it is important to bring these terms back into the expression of usefulness and maturity. I hope to shine light on topics that have been painted with a negative brush and perhaps come away with a more constructive view of things.

    If I could ever express my view on these topics and provide a useful thought to someone in search of answers, I would be delighted with my contribution. I value minding my own business, so I’d like to reiterate that I am not telling anyone how to live but merely discussing the lifestyle and characteristics of interesting people and philosophies.  

    Below I have provided a link on the benefits of strength training, as a reference for the claims I have put forth in this post. I encourage you to read further on the topic, as I am a layman.  

    https://emedicalhub.com/strength-training-for-longevity-why-lifting-weights-is-important-for-aging/

  • The Problem with the Present

    The Problem with the Present

    It is that time of the year in the garden. The plant starts have all been transplanted, the seeds sprouted and everything looks… terrible. The garden is currently suffering in its early days. After transplanting, our tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash were all distressed and doing their best to recover. They are wilted most days in the sun, turning yellow as they reach their roots out for more nutrients, and the bugs just love to gorge themselves on the weak little leaves! Some animal came by and helped themselves to the tops of some of our tomato plants, so those are gone. As an added kicker, there is a bumper crop of weeds due to a lovely spring rainfall we have been having.

    The present is all there is. Yes, and that is sometimes the problem. How many different voices are out there, trying to remind us to live in the present or experience the moment?

    Buddha said “Don’t dwell on the past, don’t dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” Albert Einstein said, “A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.” Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Only the present moment is real.” I love all these thoughts. The people who have expressed them were much more intelligent than I am. But whenever I heard this advice, or different versions of it, I always felt some discomfort in it. As if there were something more that this was missing, a little thorn in my mind that demanded to add its two cents to the popular sayings of mindfulness. I guess it would be something like: “The present is all there is… and sometimes that sucks!”

    I really want to labor the point that I love the practices of mindfulness and that I think living in the present moment is a habit we could all cultivate to improve our mental health and clarity. It is important to remind yourself that the past is past, that the future is not here and not within our control. Those are useful thoughts.

    Consider this hypothetical – your friend comes to you in despair and says they are going through one of the hardest times of their life. Everything they do seems to go nowhere, everywhere they turn feels like a dead end. Their daily life feels futile and unfulfilling and they have begun to feel quite lonely as a result. They turn to you for a word of wisdom. You say, “Don’t worry, this is it. This is all there is. Live in the moment!”

    In this particular moment, this thought is not useful. For someone going through the difficulties and pains of existence, it is precisely that the present moment is all there is that their suffering feels protracted and insurmountable.

    I am being somewhat dramatic to make a point. And I am definitely not comparing the difficulties of life with a few wilted tomato starts. These observations point in the same direction. The present is one piece of what we experience, whether we like it or not.

    Reality can be devastatingly unsatisfying at times. The urge for alternative pathways in life, the myths we tell ourselves about do-overs, the thought that it could all be different if we just change this or that element – these things are not going anywhere anytime soon. They are part and parcel to the regular woes of living, and we should probably learn to navigate them if we are to attain a peace that we can actually enjoy in the present. If an individual feels the present to be unsatisfying and painful, do we console them by saying that’s just how it is or do we tell them “The good news”: the fact that we can work toward a future that is more promising, more satisfying!

    Sure, there are pitfalls and mistakes to be made along the way. You may end up living entirely in the future and feel anxiety in that regard. You may accidentally cultivate an unpleasant attachment to the past. If you are not careful, you may arrive at your destination only to realize that your desires are self-perpetuating and will leave you unfulfilled no matter how much you achieve. These are all things we must consider as we make plans and work toward our ideals.

    Properly handling Past and Future is difficult work. It is dangerous. It is the sign of a mature person when they can walk through their memories without setting up camp. Or in building a plan for the future that can change how they act today in their habits and relationships. It takes courage, discipline, and not a small dose of humility.

    Driving comes with a lot of dangers and risks as well but we take the time to teach people how to do their best to get where they are going while paying attention to all the hazards of the road. It still doesn’t help some people – they’re insane and they’re all on i25.

    The past.

    When living in the present moment, it is quite common to stumble across a random memory you did not know was still floating around. At times, they are quite painful. Other times, they are more enjoyable than our present moment and we feel a sickness called nostalgia.

    Often, I will be working away when I am flooded by a sensation of memories that dislodge my very Being. I am inundated with details, old feelings, names and faces, all the old situations I thought I was done with. And I ask myself, “What do I do with all this information? What do I do with all these memories?” Memories aren’t grass stains, they don’t just wash out. Push them down, keep them locked up, they keep on appearing.

    I was in my garden the other day when one possible solution came to mind. Memory as a salve, memory as a tool.

    As we know, my garden is particularly disorganized and sickly looking right now. Looking out at this devastating sight, I remembered what the garden always looks like during this time of year. Hopeless, wilted, defeated. And then something happens in late June, early July. You kept watering, you kept weeding and all of a sudden everything bursts forward.

    In the present moment, when things look horrible and you think defeat is the only outcome, it may help you to search your past for other moments when things seemed bleakest.

    We also want to steer clear of romanticizing the past. Don’t look back and say, “it was better then.” Look back and ask, “what did that moment have that I can recreate now for the benefit of all?”

    Sometimes, memory may just be about cultivating simple pleasures. When I was 17, I loved the lilacs blossoming in spring. I always felt the urge to cut them and put them in a vase inside. I wanted to possess them and keep them. But I thought to myself how much deeper my experience of them would be if I simply committed them to memory. “I’m taking them with me right now,” I thought. The cut flowers would have faded inside a week but those lilacs will bloom forever in the light of my memory.

    The present.

    It can sometimes feel that people are overly mystical about the present. But there are, in my mind, just as many shortcomings to be had living in the present as in the past or future.

    Our estimates of the present can be just as inaccurate as predictions of the future. You would think we would be able to size up the present situation fairly well, since we are rational creatures and we have the advantage of living in the present moment – we are in it, rather than judging it piece by piece from a different era.

    In reality, we have a hard time analyzing our situation without involving our preconceived notions and biases. We can just as easily come to an incorrect conclusion about the present as we can in trying to make a prediction of the future.

    You may train yourself to live in the present moment but you still fall victim to making incorrect estimates of the opinions of others. You focus on things you cannot control in the moment, you focus on things that are none of your business in the moment, you use this information to make decisions in the moment that decide your habits and then your fate.

    With the present feeling somewhat unfulfilling occasionally, it is natural to look around to compare our situation to someone else’s. This would be a grave error. Not only does it lend itself to envy, it may cause much confusion and anxiety in regard to whether or not we are on the right path. When we compare our present to another’s, we might be comparing our day 1 to someone else’s 10 years of experience. We may become overwhelmed because we don’t “have it all” right now, when we could very well work towards getting what we want over the course of an entire life. You may be able to get everything you want, it just may not be all at once.

    The future.

    When we consider our memories and our perception of the present, what are we left with? The present is a little unsatisfying, memories are a little painful. Life is a bit unsatisfying and painful. So… now what? The mind turns toward the future.

    Looking to the future has gotten a bit of a bad reputation. It is commonly associated with anxiety, fear, and visions of apocalypse. But just like anything else, it can be useful when taken up by the right handle.

    There are going to be some things we know about the future. We know there are going to be hard times, though that probably isn’t very exciting to think about. Then again, knowing is somewhat comforting. There are going to be uncertainties and questions. There is going to be work.

    You will do everything you can, because that is all there is you can do. You will be you when you arrive but you may be something else afterwards.

    There are going to be different seasons of life, though you may not know what order they’re coming in. In nature, fall follows summer. In our lives, we do not know what follows.

    Marcus Aurelius said that we should not worry about the future because we will show up with the same weapons that currently arm us against the present. If you know you can endure pain now, then you know you can endure pain in the future with the same tools at your disposal.

    When you come across someone who has absolutely no plan for the future, it shows in the quality of their life. They don’t think about the consequences of their actions or the long-term effects of their present decisions. They say things like “we only live once” and “why not, there may not be a tomorrow!” but then tomorrow comes… and it keeps on coming along, one tomorrow after another. These people give themselves much more pain when they sacrifice the future for present gain or temporary pleasures.

    The world is full of people making decisions with little or no thought to future consequence. Agricultural practices that are focused on present production sacrifice a part of their future sustainability. They have cut themselves off from part of their potential because they were mystified by what they could do in the present moment, what they could get right now. Delayed gratification is a sign of maturity.

    “To plant a garden is to believe in the future.” Audrey Hepburn

    Some months ago, I was working with one of the worst coworkers I have ever experienced. He was rude, vulgar, had no sense of boundaries, did not have any work ethic, was constantly spewing his negative thoughts and opinions, and would never stop talking. The work was just as repetitive as he was. I was working nights during the winter and did not get a chance to see my fiancée very much, as we had opposite schedules. It was a difficult time.

    I remember on a particularly challenging night, I was close to losing my mind. I wanted to walk out of that place just to be rid of that discomfort. But I tried to breathe and I consoled myself by repeating the phrase, “You’re going to keep going. You’re going to get out of here.” It was at that moment I realized one could just as easily console themselves with the future as fret over it.

    If we never considered the future, we would never start anything worthwhile. We would look out at a dusty field and say, “I guess that’s it.” If we did not picture the harvest in our mind, we would not sow. Sure, it hurts to think about the things we do not have, sure it is painful and self-sacrificing to begin the long work we need to do in order to achieve our aims, but the mature person knows the future has more potential than the present as long as they keep showing up.

    Sustainable practices are about looking at what we do now and deciding how long we can keep it up for. Sacrificing the future for present gain is how we get exactly where we are now. Sacrificing a part of the present for the sake of the future is sustainable, is delayed gratification, is the tradition of great civilizations and communities.

    Conclusions

    Is this post still about gardening? The garden is a metaphor, it’s about life! I pull the carrots, and they teach me about economics. I plant tomatoes and I am learning the oldest lessons in psychology. It’s all there in the garden because it’s all connected. I am a metaphor farmer.

    So, what do we do with more than our fair share of past, present, and future? The key is to focus on what you can control. You can look into the future and make a practical savings plan because you can control how much you start to save now, today, this moment. You can plan projects, events, and achievements because these things involve you and the things you can do now, they involve your habits.

    You cannot control the past, but you can control what you tell yourself about it. Was it an embarrassing disaster or a learning experience? I would say we look at our memory as a bank of wealth that we have at our disposal. What has worked and what has not worked? For you and even for other people you know about, there is no limit to this wealth. We use this memory to help us accept the present. Not better than it is, not worse than it is. We must live here, so we must get used to it.

    Then, holding our memory in one hand and our present in the other, we can build a plan. Something we can work on, something we want to work on, as this is the kind of work that is day-in and day-out. The work of life does not stop. Jung said, “Adaptation does not happen once and for all.”

    Now your plans are dashed against fortune. It is harder than you thought. It takes longer than you thought. Yes, that is another thing we know for sure about the future, there will be many attempts. Then you take up the torch again and make another plan. Sow more seeds, plant more starts, keep watering.

    The present moment can sometimes be awful, that is true. It is for this reason that we must appreciate when it is not so awful. When it is pleasant going and we feel ourselves on our own paths and we have people in our lives that we want to share these things with, we must not make the mistake of not paying attention. After all, the present is all there is!

  • Abundance is Natural

    Lessons from My Chickens Series

    When we started gardening, we harvested maybe two or three pounds of produce our first year. We were so proud of our shriveled, little radishes and our fistful of basil. Last year, we managed to produce in excess of three hundred pounds of produce as well as collected thousands of eggs from our chickens. We could not believe how simple it had been. I won’t say easy because, at times, it was some of the most tedious and grueling work I could have chosen to do. But after caring for the chickens into their adulthood, the eggs just kept on coming! Day after day after day, the chickens did their goodwork and laid egg after egg. In the later part of the summer when most of the vegetables were ready to harvest, we were drowning in good, quality food we had grown ourselves. It felt like printing our own money. We realized that this should not have been surprising at all. Nature is abundant and abundance is natural.

    I think there is a tendency for us to look at our work from the standpoint of pure effort. I built this house, I grew this food, I fixed this motor, I achieved this, I made that. When it comes to gardening and other pursuits that are more intimately related to nature, you may eventually realize something. That you never really grow anything.

    That may sound strange, but it is true. I don’t grow my tomatoes. The tomato plants grow themselves. I can’t grow squash or basil or peppers, only the plants know how to do that. I may put them in the ground and water them occasionally but the plant knows what it needs to do and does it even without my supervision. It is the same with the chickens. I may bring them feed but they are the ones turning their feed into eggs. I come along and collect when it’s time.

    Nature is inherently abundant. We simply arrange things to allow for nature to do what nature does best, which is produce things in abundance.

    This flies in the face of some preconceived notions I had about living this life. I thought the effort I was putting in was translating into the things I received. When I stopped trying so hard, things kept going on producing without me. It didn’t have to be about struggle, effort, and exertion. I still worked hard and was diligent about completing my part in the process but I didn’t have to exhaust myself in trying to achieve these things. I set the stage and then let nature do its thing. I think our nature works along the same lines.

    By our nature, I simply mean becoming whatever you are and acting this process out every day. I think we have all been around people who are not doing the thing they were made for. They are frustrated and angry, which are surface level signs that they are most likely depressed and filled with the anxiety of something that has not been allowed to become itself. We have met with the mechanic who doesn’t want to be a mechanic. A striking difference between them and the mechanic who actually wants to be a mechanic, wouldn’t you agree? In the first case, they are annoyed to the point of rage by any obstacle or setback, they are short and impolite with their coworkers and customers, and they treat their tools and surroundings with disdain and contempt. Why? Because they do not want to be there, and every part of their daily reality reminds them of that.

    To the person who is naturally a mechanic, a setback is just that and nothing else. Something to get through and get over. But to the person who is already at the edge of their limits, engaged in something they would rather not do, any inconvenience becomes a reminder of their underlying disappointment.

    We each have a nature that cannot be denied. It can be worked with, improved, built upon, and developed but when an individual denies their nature they are in for a world of hurt. The introvert is not going to naturally be inclined to public speaking, an extrovert outdoorsman is not going to be inclined to solitary work in a dimly lit cubicle. That would be like trying to milk a chicken or pull eggs off a tomato plant. If we align ourselves with our nature and with the limits and properties of nature in general, we can achieve great things.

    When things are aligned with nature. then productivity becomes a pleasant process. In the garden, plants that are healthy, happy, and allowed to fully express their nature provide in abundance. I have never seen a tomato plant harassed into abundance, or a chicken starved into increased production. This is why every aspect must be respected in due course. Natural things are productive, and productivity is natural.

    It may not be as obvious in natural settings that there are exchanges being made and mutually beneficial situations being sought out but it is quite common to see these kinds of cost/benefit relationships cropping up in the natural world. They may not use money and factories but make no mistake, plants and animals profit from different resources that are available at different times and they make the use of these benefits in order to grow, adapt, and overcome the challenges of their unique situation.

    Someone’s goodwork may be making shoes, welding, carpentry, teaching, accounting, raising children, cutting hair, sweeping streets, stirring a pot of soup. I believe all work has in it a certain sacred duty that the individual can be a part of and be proud of. We are, each of us, putting in order our little corner of the universe.

    Finding our goodwork means finding positive relationships with work, with wealth, and with nature. Building a community that believes in the benefits, nuance, and the potential of doing good work. Opening discussions as to how we will improve our work going forward, how we will build a world we want to live in and not one we just put up with. This is what Goodwork is about.

    I wanted to share this idea in case there were potential farmers or gardeners who were dissuaded from this pursuit by the thought that the workload would slowly kill them. It is also applicable to anyone who wishes to pursue their own goodwork and fears the immensity of the tasks ahead of them. Look to your nature, and to Nature in general. Nature does almost all the work we claim to do and does it silently, at that. It demands no attention and achieves all its ends.

    “Nature does not hurry and yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu

  • How to Kill Tomatoes

    How to Kill Tomatoes

    *Disclaimer: this is not intended as a purely instructional article on the growing of tomatoes. For more information on the growing of tomatoes and the processes and techniques we use, reach out through our instagram: @goodworkgardens

    There is no gardening achievement quite like the tomato. Often undertaken by absolute beginners and professionals alike, they are a symbol of the health of the garden as well as a motivating image of the harvest one must get to at the end of the season.

    When we started growing our own tomato plants four years ago, we made every mistake you could possibly make. In starting seeds, we simply tossed them into some random containers of soil, put them in a humid plastic container and set them by the window to give them some light. We saw sprouts after a couple days. They quickly shot up, reaching weakly for the light of our window, then fell over with their spindly stems and died, pale and desperate. Enter: our neighbor.

    A horticulture student at our local university, she had the magic touch. She looked at our setup in disbelief and said three things that changed our routine.

    1. Put their light as close to their container as you can. We bought a long grow-light from our local hardware store and set it about two or three inches above the soil surface. When they sprouted and as they grew, we kept raising the light with them.
    2. Use starter soil. It made a huge difference in both nutrient content and moisture retention. The soil was loose enough for little seedling roots but could also retain moisture so the sensitive sprouts would not dry out.
    3. Put the seeds near the surface and cover them with vermiculite. We had been burying our seeds about an inch below the surface and leaving the soil uncovered. We consistently had gnats in our grow area (our living room). The vermiculite increased our germination success as well as got rid of our gnat problem.

    With her help, we kept learning from our mistakes and kept growing. When the seedlings started getting tall, we called for her help again. She recommended we keep a fan on them to build the strength of their stems. The little breeze signals to the sprouts to “Hold on!” and this develops their roots and stems.

    In those years, we were container gardening in our inhospitable yard. We planted our tomatoes in an assortment of five gallon buckets along our fence and supported them with flimsy tomato cages that are common in gardening centers. When we began to get ripe tomatoes, we were elated. Almost immediately, we understood why harvest festivals have been such an integral cultural practice in every civilization in the history of the world. Harvests seem impossible. That is why they are celebrated with such devotion. The work and attention and endless variables throughout the season distract you from the possibility of a reward. When you finally get to that day, it feels unrelated somehow, and providential.

    In that year, I think we had somewhere around five pounds of tomatoes and random assortment of other produce – chamomile flowers, a couple shriveled radishes, four or five little potatoes. Still, we were hooked.

    The next year, in addition to the container garden in our yard, we also signed up for our local community garden where we were assigned an in-ground garden plot of one hundred square feet. We took the lessons that we learned the previous year and we were off to the races. And we did much better! It was nothing compared to what we do today or compared to professionals but we were increasing our yield and gardening in the actual ground. We learned to bury the tomato starts deep, to mulch heavily, and to KEEP UP WITH THE PRUNING!

    We were still not measuring our yield yet but I estimate we got about ten pounds of tomatoes and maybe a pound of peppers and carrots. Often we would neglect the plot, getting busy and distracted in our day-to-day lives as one does, and we would forget to water.

    After two years of consistent learning, lots of trial-and-error, and becoming more attentive to the garden, we were really becoming skilled. That year, we started close to five hundred plants and sold them in a little street market sale on our street alongside our neighbors. They were all happy and healthy. We had three neighbors who were horticulture majors or professional gardeners and that helped with increasing our knowledge. It also happened to be a wet spring and summer. Our community garden plot exploded with life and it seemed like we did not have to try as hard to get ten times the amount of produce.

    Overwhelmed with the abundance, we began to keep track of our harvests in poundage and type of produce. By the end of the season, we had raised one hundred pounds. Tomatoes, beans, carrots, squash, peppers, radishes, and many different types of herbs. That year changed things dramatically – we finally saw the potential in raising quality food for ourselves and others, a dream which still drives us currently.

    The community garden and our haphazard container garden weren’t cutting it anymore. Our ambition was to do even more and for that we needed more space. I connected with a local who rented his land out. We didn’t need much. We had only managed a hundred-square-foot plot and a few buckets, so we didn’t want to scale up faster than we could handle. After much initial work, we set up three hundred square feet of in-ground gardening space and a coop full of beautiful chickens. That year we grew approximately three hundred pounds of produce and gathered something around 2,000 eggs.

    That year we had grown twenty tomato plants. Fifteen made it to harvest, the others dying of various causes including disease and pests. Tomatoes come in so many shapes, sizes, and colors, we wanted to experiment a little and find out what the best varieties were. Our personal favorites were the German Pink and the Pineapple for cutting tomatoes, the Peron and Roma for sauce or salad tomatoes, and the Prairie Fire and Yellow Pear tomatoes for snacking/cherry tomato varieties.

    Following the tomatoes from seedling all the way to a favorite recipe was deeply rewarding. There is so much to say about this staple crop in its impact on cuisine and culture but that is for another time. For now, I will focus on the growing… and the killing of tomato seedlings.

    This year went a little different than previous years. Here I was, thinking we had this all figured out and down to a science. I thought we could grow a thousand seedlings with our eyes closed. But each year teaches you a different lesson. Each year the circumstances are different, the variables have changed, and you are not the same individual that grew this garden the previous year. It is never the same garden twice.

    Of the one hundred tomato plants we started, almost all were withering and dying after the first two weeks of growth. I stressed about the different variables – the soil quality, the watering schedule, the lights we used. Making adjustments seemingly changed nothing. They just kept on dying. A last ditch effort was made and we potted up the little, fragile seedlings to see if the new soil would help them take hold. The hundred seedlings were soon down to twenty-five of the healthiest specimens and we had to compost the rest. I watched them diligently, hoping they would somehow make a rebound before the planting day.

    After just two days, they grew in leaps and bounds. I thought I had killed them. I thought I had pushed them to the absolute limit with neglect. But that little mite of life was still crouching inside them, waiting for the chance to spring back.

    Gardening always surprises me in this way. I suppose that is the message of this particular post. The resilience and potential of life in all respects seems unfazed, undeterred.

    This post isn’t about how to grow tomatoes, it’s about how to kill them. We are always good at that part because it is easy. The path we have taken toward growing hundreds of pounds of produce is littered with the trial-and-error plants we have killed along the way. Each year we kill more tomato plants. Each year we end up harvesting more than we did the year before. The dead and dying plants are evidence of effort, a testament to our attempts. And that is what people must do: fail all the way to success.

    You look at your collection of withering seedlings on the shelf and you think it’s over. You visit your garden beds and the grasshoppers have helped themselves to everything but the bare stems of your herbs and tomatoes. Dejected and hopeless, you are ready to give it up. But some part of you still clings to that image of the harvest at the end of the season. You’d like to give up and go home but you make one last push. Always that last effort. You keep going, you keep working.

    A half dozen farming phrases, dripping with stoicism, come to mind. “Oh, well.” “Tomorrow is another day.” “Moving right along.” All of them mean one thing. Just keep going.

    The leaves are stripped and brown in the sun but you keep watering the beds anyway. The seedlings could not look worse but you pot them up anyway. It may be stubborn persistence or stupid hope but you keep doing the work in spite of the conditions. Somewhere along the way, that mite of life catches and you’re walking through the lush and abundant world that seemed impossible not too long before.

  • Lessons from My Chickens

    Focus on what you can control

    The lessons of life wait to be unraveled from the plainest of circumstances. Collect the chicken eggs and the mind wanders. Work in the quiet and you will learn many lessons. This one is straightforward, though difficult to put into practice.

    When we first started raising our chickens, they were two or three days old. Little, fuzzy chicks are just about the cutest animals there are. As you are watching them in those first days, you want to control everything about their environment to protect them.

    We obsessed over giving them the correct feed and cleaning their water. They love to sit atop the waterer and poop directly down into the tray. Cleaning it became a chore multiple times per day. Chicks are also prone to something called ‘pasty butt’ which is basically a mean case of constipation that their delicate systems can’t handle. We would pick up each chick to check their butts and would perform the procedure of removing their pasty butt as if we were performing surgery. In those first days, we paid them almost constant attention.

    We rent the land that our flock is currently living on, and it is a fifteen minute drive from our house. This fact alone prevents us from controlling a lot of factors that we might otherwise have obsessed over in the beginning. Whether we were turning the heat lamp on and off or checking to make sure all of the chickens got in before their automatic door shut, those early days were filled with a lot of unnecessary trips to the coop.

    It wasn’t until a few months into this that we learned a key lesson. Even if we wanted to, we could not control all of the variables we were worrying about. If a fox got into the coop, we wouldn’t even know about it until the next day, let alone be able to do anything to stop it. You simply cannot live your life listing all of the things that could go wrong – you wouldn’t have time for anything else!

    Though we realized the importance of this lesson, it is not something that people naturally do. Like I said before, it is difficult to put this idea into practice. I told myself I could not control X, Y, or Z variable but the thought of it still consumed me. It wasn’t until later that I would be able to remind myself of this lack of control, as a daily practice, and then go the next step to put those thoughts out of my mind. For me, it was all about repetition. Eventually, it becomes habitual to recognize what you can and cannot control and then to put all irrelevant things out of your mind for the time being.

    Whether it is other people’s emotions or behavior, the state of the world at large, or the basic and inconvenient facts of life, we are constantly reminded of things we cannot control and we must take responsibility to shift our focus to those things we can control. We control our behaviors, our responses to situations, our efforts and how we use our time. We can control what we say, what we focus on, and what we can work toward.

    Everywhere you turn, you will find people who are fixated on listing the things of this world that they have zero control over. They remind you of the various ills befalling people, such as disease, economic hardship, and governmental abuses at home and abroad. Maybe they list some of the atrocities and disasters of history, both recent and remote. What begins in compassion or concern ends in powerlessness. In seeking control, one finds themselves controlled by others.

    Let me be the one to remind you today: it is not your responsibility to care for the world at large. It is your responsibility to put together your corner of the universe. You are not evil, cowardly, or ignorant for opting out of the hysteria in order to be more productive and efficient in your own life.

    I would go so far as to say that the inverse is true. Those people who make a habit of focusing on the things they cannot control are also the people who have little or no control over their own behavior, habits, or paths in life. They make demands of others which they cannot satisfy in themselves.

    This is not to say they are bad people – it is easy to fall into this pattern. Focusing on what one cannot control is easier than working on what we can control. We should remind ourselves daily that we control only a certain number of things, and it is not a shortcoming or a character flaw to focus only on those things we can influence. What would the alternative be? To lose sight of the things we can control so that we may pay attention to the things we don’t? That is the perfect way to lose everything.

    “I do what is mine to do, the rest does not disturb me.” – Marcus Aurelius

    Why does focusing on what we control not sound like enough? Because it is not glamorous. Watering and weeding the crop can be mundane. Focusing on our work has no monuments, no parades. It has no flags or banners. It is simple. Often filled with dirt and toil.

    Agitating under the weight of daily life and its monotony, we begin to look for a crown or a halo, some altar to worship at, some savior to rise from the crowd. Something to save us from the inconvenient task of putting our lives together one day at a time.

    I am not trying to sound aloof. More often than not, the routine of daily life is burdensome. Though I make gratitude a part of my daily practice, there are some days when that little voice in my head chirps up again: “What is the point? What is the point to any of this?” This is not an easy question to answer. Often, one can only answer it with the sum of the effort of their lives.

    I collect my eggs in the morning, plant my carrots in the garden beds. I hope there can be a new universe on the other side of my daily tasks. But we cannot always be looking elsewhere for a life to live.

    We cannot control where we begin but we can control the direction in which we journey. We cannot control the future but we can control the work we do today in the here and now.

    We should not look for things outside of ourselves but cultivate it mindfully in our own daily practices. If you desperately seek love in the external, you will not find it. But act with love in your own daily life and you will have all you want. You can seek money or you can create value. You can shout and beg for peace or you can foster connection and collaboration. You can give yourself over to desiring the results or you can learn to love the process. What world would you like to inhabit? Start building it with the bricks of your own habits.

    Focusing on what we control is part of the essential daily practice of accepting reality as it is. I always thought that accepting reality meant limiting my potential or that it meant others would have control over me. Once again, the opposite seems to be true. The more I focus on the work at hand, the quicker I can begin actually fulfilling my potential. The more I focus on observing and managing my own behavior, emotions, and thoughts, the less control other people have over me.

    There are many different behaviors and emotions which stem from losing sight of our circle of control. These can include comparisons, envy, jealousy, and impatience. We may become convinced that there is nothing within our control and this may lead to much anxiety and depression. Thankfully this is not true. The things we are capable of have always been enough to build a genuine and purposeful life. Don’t let the vague and desperate moans of others convince you that there is “no point” in trying.

    Practices and Meditations

    Learn to use your words. Communicating our thoughts and experiences can be a valuable tool in navigating the world outside our direct control. Just because you cannot control others does not mean you cannot communicate with them in a clear and concise manner. Ask for things you need, set proper boundaries, give a compliment, seek advice on things you are unsure about. Don’t assume others will know what you are experiencing if you remain silent. Don’t assume they will understand you as soon as you say something. This process lasts forever.

    Never disparage the act of trying. With yourself and with others – it is an unforgivable act to take the enthusiasm from someone’s honest efforts.

    Mind your business. Benjamin Franklin recommended the motto on our currency be “Mind Your Business”. I find this as relevant today as it was in 1776, since people seem to struggle with this tenet more than ever. It has two interpretations: the first would be to focus on your work, to be disciplined in commerce. The second would be to keep your nose out of other people’s business. They also seem to go hand in hand, for the more you are focused on your work, the less attention you are able to give to gossiping about your neighbor or passing judgments and regulations on the behavior of other people. Focusing on what you can control, on the work you are capable of doing and which sits in front of you waiting to be done, is the surest way toward peace and prosperity.