My life varies between Internet time and farm time.
Internet time is short and choppy. An email message comes in and I answer it right away, so it doesn't pile up. A PR flack calls from some company and we spend ten minutes talking about a product they're sending over for review. An article is due today, a book chapter this week; software in progres is continuously revised in short bursts of time. When I'm in Internet time, it's not unusual for me to have half a dozen things in the stack: when I finish reading this web page I'm going to go answer the email that interrupted the weblog update I was doing that was a break from the software test that I couldn't figure out.
Then there's farm time. Farm time moves in rhythm with the sun and the seasons. I get up with the sun and brush the horse down at the end of the day as it's setting. This time of year there's brush to clear so I can rototill later so I can plant later still so we can enjoy a harvest of vegetables in the fall. Farm time doesn't have interruptions for the most part; I can finish one job before I go on to the next, and in fact usually I must do so. Once the horse is out and being brushed, I can't just leave her standing haltered next to the house to go check the chickens for fresh eggs.
When I'm on farm time I notice things that I overlook when I'm on Internet time. A few of these:
- The patterns of snow on the fields. When it shows a few inches, the winter wheat fields look whiter than the CRP land surrounding them, which is still in dry tall grass, because the snow covers the wheat while it falls among the grasses. When the weather warms up a bit and the snow starts to melt, the south-facing slopes are clear before the north-facing slopes, and the furrows show up in the plowed fields, white lines on a dark background.
- Microclimates. The weather changes from spot to spot even on our tiny farm. Different plants grow on one side of the canyon compared to the other. There's a spot behind our house where the opposing wind eddies result in an area a few feet across that gets no snow. Icicles are longer on one side of the house than the other.
- Eggs. They're all different, like snowflakes. Some are rounder, some longer. Some are uniform dark brown, some a lighter brown, some have white speckles. I'm starting to wonder what those uniform white objects from the supermarket are.
- The horse's hooves have a different shape in the back than in the front. Her hair gets longer in the winter. Her tail has a slightly different texture than her mane. Who knew? Not this city kid. But handling and being with an animal twice a day it's impossible not to notice these things.
- Life is tenacious. We planted fava beans last spring, and they did fairly well. But they blackened and died when we got hard frost for a week solid. Only now, one of them is putting out new growth from the roots, right through the snow, and it's poked its little leaves up a foot or so. How does this one plant hang on? I dunno, but I can't bring myself to pull it to till that area. We might have one fava bean in that row next season. Onions, swisschard, kale, even a bit of hardy spinach are also surviving the snowy weather and the freezes every night.
I could go on and on...the pattern of remaining leaves on the black locust tree, the sight of a hawk sweeping low over the field outside my window, the fun our dogs have chasing pheasants in the hills...what it all adds up to is that farm time is an antidote to Internet time, a thing that helps keep me centered. I hope I'm always able to take time out and experience joy in the beautiful complexity of the natural world.