HappyDay: Reflecting on the Tortoise and the Hare

Casey O’Neill is a cannabis and food farmer in Mendocino County who has been writing newsletters about his efforts to provide sustainable produce and marijuana. We feature his column once a week.

     I’ve been having a lot of reflections lately about the tortoise and the hare.  As I travel through the last year of my 30’s, I think about a life of farming.  I’m glad to be able-bodied and capable of doing the work, and I enjoy it very much.  I have always tended to be fast moving, pushing hard to finish the task and get on to the next one, sprinting along like the hare.

     Music in the headphones has been a key part of my journey, providing a bounce to my step and a rhythm by which to work.  I like up-tempo, fast paced tunes and they have tended to help with my desire to push hard and get things done.  Of late, I’ve been turning more toward the slower pace of audiobooks, finding that the more measured set of energetics is helpful for me at this point in my life.

      Working with animals is a key part of our farm operation, and I had been finding that I was having a hard time bringing the type of calm energy that is necessary, especially with lambs and rabbits.  Moving fast with the music hammering in my ears, I struggled to engage with livestock in a way that worked for them, and they were often spooked and jumpy.

      I’ve been trying to be more conscious of my mental chatter, which I struggled to control while listening to high-energy music, and I often found myself ruminating in stressful thought loops.  Listening to a story keeps the mental chatter at bay because I am engrossed in the happenings and not spending time worrying.

      I can see drawbacks to both modalities, for neither keeps me entirely present in the action at hand; I’m less likely to hear the birdsong of spring and it doesn’t work well for tasks that require reading or more intent comprehension.  That said, for rote tasks like animal chores, weeding, transplanting and many of the other jobs that make up a farm, I find that the soothing words unspooling through my day keep me calm and focused, enjoying my work and the story at the same time.

     This week was a big one for bed prep, for there is still so much to be done to ready the farm for the growing season ahead.  The cover crop is thick and lush, and I have been chipping away at it a couple beds at a time.  One sunny morning this past week I was readying myself to head out to begin the prep work when I made the mistake of making a mental catalog of how many beds still need to be done.  Outside of planning processes, it can be dangerous to pick your head up too far, because the work stretches out in an endless procession that can be overwhelming.

      As I laced my boots and thought about all the bed prep still to do, I felt the overwhelm rush in so fast that I almost wanted to just give up and go back to bed.  Instead, I took a deep breath and stepped out the door into the gorgeous spring sunshine and continued the journey of the farm.  One step at a time is the way that any task must be done, and by the end of the day I had made progress, finishing the prep on two more large terraces.

      I pulled the fence posts from last year’s cannabis, untying the drip lines that they had held up out of the cover crop for the winter.  I laid the t-posts and the drip on the sloped banks above each terrace, up out of the way for the BCS walk-behind tractor on which I had put the flail mower.  After making sure that the beds were clear of rocks and other things that might bind up the mower, I mowed the whole terrace with three passes.

      It’s tricky to mow the low edge of the terrace because the ground cover is so thick that it’s hard to tell where the drop off begins.  The machine tries to slide sideways over the drop, but I’ve gotten very careful at paying attention to the point where it starts to go, and I can put it in reverse and swing it around so it backs up onto the flat bed surface.  I mow as far out as I can, leaving a strip of uncut vegetation on the edge of the terrace and the cut bank.

     After mowing, I add amendments and compost, broadfork, and then switch out the mower for the power harrow, which stirs the chopped cover crop and compost into the top inch or two of soil, making for good contact which will hasten decomposition.  The final step is a covering of old dep tarp that will block sunlight, causing weed seeds to germinate and die underneath.  Three weeks later (give or take depending on weather) the bed will be ready to plant with much less weed pressure for the season to come.

     Farming is an incremental process, slow and steady and requiring a consistency that is both affirming yet daunting at times.  As I look back over the years, I can see a progression that builds skill and infrastructure to create both the man I am today and the farm that provides my livelihood and so much of my identity.  Now it is time to head out to work.  As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!