The Remedy: A Quiet Life

The Remedy: A Quiet Life

I remember the first year we started Foxhole, I got the chance to sit down with the produce manager of our local market in Dayton, a potentially big account for us.  I was amped up and primed as if I was heading into a big game...clean flannel shirt, chinos, and a clip in my hair (as fancy as I get) to answer the usual questions about our business: what are your food safety standards? what yield can you commit to bringing to our shelves every week?  Instead she asked me a few questions that had my body relaxing into my chair: what are you about?  What is the essence of you and what you do at Foxhole?  Give me your mission statement.

This is the type of conversation I thrive in...unlike the clinical, all-business ones.  My answer in that instance was to live a good life with our kids, growing food for the community.  Maybe we should all be put on the spot with these life questions every once in a while to see what comes out of our mouths...just to check in.  It turns out four years later that our mission is essentially the same as that spur of the moment one.  

In a world that seems to move incredibly fast and full of people who struggle more with mental well-being than in our grandmothers' time, Rich and my latest mantra is to look for the quiet life.  That comes more naturally to Rich...an only child who requires solitude on a regular basis.  Is THAT why he found his way to the field?  The field: an endless expanse of sky above you, feet of warm soil layers alive beneath, acres of flora and fauna setting a most cathartic scene no matter if you're out there taking it in or not.  It's the sort of place that has unlocked our best selves, setting the stage of our lives in a way that we can flourish and tap into creativity, maximizing what we can contribute to the world, to our kids, and certainly to ourselves.  I wish everyone had such a sanctuary.

We aren't immune to the goading insistence of our modern world to grow MORE, move FASTER and do it all more cheaply.  This approach harkens me back to the culinary school days, sleeping less and grinding.  Unlike my only-child counterpart, this feverish pace of life suited my rabbit-like personality/middle-of-five way. The fight or flight life.  The life in which chances of flying too close to the sun are high.  The loud life is exciting though, right?  There's such energy and fire and passion in that way of life.  There was something tempting about the kitchen big leagues...but it was precisely the allurement of ambition that drew Icarus to his demise, remember?  Mythology lives to teach us.  Are we learning from it?  I thank Rich for reminding me to stay the course between the heavens and the sea, so we don't find ourselves burning up like that Icarus.  

And so when people ask periodically...why not hire a crew and grow more and show up at other markets and raise more pastured livestock and tap the maple trees, and expand your catering and open your farm up to the public, my answer has become: to maintain a good life with our kids and ourselves, so that as they grow, we can grow what we do in time.  We SO value our freedom to choose not to subscribe to the 'do it all' and 'work hard-play hard' philosophies that are pervasive.  

Recently I met a woman who shared an idea of hers with me.  The plan is to start a farm in tandem with a psychiatric hospital where she works as a therapist.  The hope is that tangible work in the solace of a garden will offer peace and balance to her patients' lives, helping them to acclimate to this 21st century world.  Ah!  The quiet life!  A few weeks ago my best friend left her job in the ER to work at an outpatient clinic with a regular schedule, and without daily calamity.  Again...a stepping out of chaos and into a more sustainable way of life.  I hear it all too often that life is out of balance for folks...overworked or stimulated.  Why is it that we are so cognizant of the negative impact of that on babies and kids, but don't look out for ourselves? It's become so apparent to me that finding more calmness in our lives is a catch-all antidote. Breathing, meditation, yoga, massage, cabins in the woods, remembering old songs you learned on the guitar, reading a book, walks, writing, time behind a camera, conversations with those people in our lives who feel like a dose of good medicine...hopefully making a living in a way that doesn't just take but gives to us.  MORE OF THESE!

In reality, I'm writing this more to myself than to anyone else.  Within the past month I've had an autoimmunity wave come over me like a tsunami reminder of last year...the year I learned that Hashimoto's was part of my life at all.  This time has stirred me to investigate why it's come on with a vengeance...fogging my brain and stealing my energy by the time I've cleaned up from breakfast.  Does my body really need the sleep it's asking me for by 10 am?!  What could I do to get myself back?  I rise with the sun and sleep with the moon, I have taken so much off of my plate in this slow time of our year, I don't stray too far off the beaten diet path.  And again Rich and I come back to the same thing: we need to find quiet.  If I really open my eyes to more than what's on paper, there has been heartache and stress in my life from some things they say "you need to accept and which you cannot change".  

When you are coming up against something that the best in medicine don't quite understand yet, it teaches you to look out for yourself in the ways you can.  And so I've turned to those things that give me energy lately in the hopes of healing and restoring my well-being: going to May's hair salon in her bedroom, Jack's dance parties with the same single song over and over, laying in the sunny spot on our living room floor like a turtle on a rock after cold winter work, yoga sessions where inevitably I have kids or the dog crawling underneath my downward dog, eating food that gives me energy (I'm talking about you pea shoots and sweet potatoes and beyond), and really trying to cull the loudness from my flock and life.  

Cry when the rains come, yell when the anger comes, talk when fear comes, dance when energy comes, and just be still more often.  And when I find myself bent out of shape about how the people of the world are interacting with it, just remind myself that everyone is on their own way through it outside of my control.  We were all dealt a different hand and a good number of people are doing their best to figure it all out.

That angel from the market...I still see her when I can and we catch up on life.  (For the record, the market does carry our goods and has since year one.  I guess I looked sharp with that clip in my hair.)  She is one of those folks who makes you feel as if all the bible stories are true...like there are people who cross your path to remind you of your course and to drive you toward what you want to become, helping you realize the life you want to make for yourself.  Perhaps we all would find more fulfillment with less on our plates, smart phones out of our lives (been trying to figure out how to kick it out of mine), and more time to tune out instead of in.  Maybe on the road to market this Saturday morning, I wouldn't have run into more than one driver racing and riding bumpers to weave in and out of traffic to get where they're going maybe (?) five minutes sooner.  Maybe they would have spotted the bald eagle I saw flying across the river if they would have slowed down and gotten there five minutes later.  We'll never know, but my suspicion is that if we slowed down and invited that quiet in, we'd find time we didn't know was there.