Fresh From the Farm

Best Hours Of Farming at Open Gate Farm
The best hours of farming are in the morning.  When the birds wake each other up and start to yatter and whistle and call out that their relatives in the east report the sun has made it around the earth one more time and it should be here shortly, when the dew finishes dropping on the deck and lawn, when the day stretches out like a painter’s blank canvas ready for the colors of labor to paint pictures of life that will be seen by generations to come, that is the best time for farming. Actually, the best time to be a farmer is in the middle of the day.  That is when the air is warming and the kinks are gone from the body and muscles have been stretched and good effort has produced some change in the place and progress is seen in the work at hand and sitting down to a fine meal of solid food and cold water leaves one confident that there is still time to finish up before it gets too hot and talk is of the hope for a hammock and a short snooze. However the really best time to be a farmer is in the evening when supper is finished, the dishes done, the animals fed and closed into protective coops and barns, the tools cleaned and put away, the planting, weeding, and harvesting of the day accomplished, and walking back to the house your farmers drift a bit and pause to smell the flowers and admire the colors and handiwork of their creator who has opened doors for them all day long and what was not finished today is put on the list for tomorrow, a tomorrow that will begin with birdsong and light and hope which will become as real as the colors of the  evening sunset. There will always be more work.  There will always be unfinished projects.  There will always be tasks that explode on you or get completely out of hand.  We can let that reality of never getting done tire us out or give us hope.  It just depends on whether we allow ourselves to occasionally drift on the way back to the house and smell the gentle flowers and give thanks for all we have and all we do as we let them shape who we are becoming.

– Jon Stevens, Open Gate Farm