It’s 11:08 at night and I just got back from a run. I haven’t run in weeks and it felt glorious. The nights are dark out here when the moon is mostly hiding. Its dark creamy orange gave just enough light for my feet to make out the loose gravel. I feel safe running alone at night out here, but I was glad our dog, Chloe, came with me, a white furry comfort.  

 

I was up late last night too. I’ve had short nights for months now, something I need to talk through with my counselor. I think I’m afraid of the time between laying my head on the pillow and falling dead asleep. I spend so much energy thinking and alternatively trying not to think during the day that by the time night falls I want just to be done. I stay awake until I am so tired that I can barely make it to the kitchen to brush my teeth (I use the kitchen because I don’t want to disturb either the Whartons or the Lanes by going upstairs or down to use a bathroom sink). I hope sleep will return to me at some point.

 

 

I believe I lived today.

 

I rose early, made coffee and spent some time reading John for Everyone by NT Wright. I did some office stuff for the farm in my room, made some phone calls, left messages. I made a payment on our large and growing feed bill. The lady at the grain mill knows my voice now and will ask if it’s Hand Hewn Farm when I say I want to make a payment. I hope that’s a good thing.

 

I planted rosemary cuttings that have been patiently waiting to sink their roots into soil for a few weeks. I harvested okra and some carrots. I worked on canning tomato sauce. I did two loads of laundry. About mid-morning, I put a shoulder roast in the Crock-Pot for our supper, poured balsamic vinegar and honey over it and added salt, pepper and fresh rosemary.  I picked two five gallon buckets of apples to turn into juice and jelly. I talked to our CPA about our 2015 farm taxes. I finally spoke with someone from the Natural Resources Conservation Service about the farms high tunnel application. I cried a few times, missing still, a (former) husband who no longer wants ‘us’. I picked four gallons of green beans. I planted twenty-five feet of fall spinach and some late seedlings as an experiment. I broadcasted a seventy-five foot row with Austrian Winter Field peas (which I’m using as a cover crop and some of which will be fed to the pigs).

 

I finished up dinner (potatoes, a fresh salad, and slivers of glazed acorn squash baked in coconut oil) in between folding laundry and finishing up some things in the garden. I bottled some peach vinegar that has been forming layer upon layer upon layer of “mother” in its dark secret crock. I ate a good meal with the friends and business partners who fill my life with work, company, and with grace.  

 

This list may sound terribly mundane. It may be terribly mundane to list all the things I did today and then to make that list public. But as I was running tonight, thinking about my day, praying, I thought about how all the things I did today might be mundane but they needed to be done. And much more important, I wanted to do them. (Except perhaps for the missing and the crying although even that was and is probably necessary.) I have worked many jobs because I had to or because I was too scared to take a risk and try something that might make me happy but would squeeze my finances or be too unpredictable. This time I was left with no choice or rather I left myself no choice. When Andrew told me he was done with our marriage one of the clear thoughts I had was, “I am never going to do a job again that isn’t life giving.” There are often days or moments when I feel anxious about all the things that need done that I don’t have time to do. Multiple outstanding projects, research to be done, paperwork, vegetables rotting because I can’t get to them soon enough, a diminishing bank account. In spite of any anxiety I feel about the work or any questions I have about the life events that have brought me here I know that I am here now because I want to be . . .