Last night I needed an infusion of farm. Having spent the whole day reading Novella Carpenter's Farm City, I was in need of a fix, so my family and I headed down to the local Tractor Supply for the end of their Chick Days promotion, and I got to see some white leghorn chicks and baby ducks hanging out under brooding lamps in all their fluffy glory. Sadly, I couldn't take any home as I am expecting much larger adult chickens as soon as I can get the door and fencing finished on the poultry palace. But the need to have livestock here at the SemiFarm is real. It is visceral, like my need to find a job, and I try to ignore it as I go about my days, as it lurks looming in the background like some hungry beast or addiction, waiting to be fed. I pine for the winged foragers and their hopping counterparts, rabbits, have also started to be a drug to which I am slowly succumbing.
I am desperately in need of some warmer weather, you see, as it has dropped into the 40s and 50s here as of late. They are even calling for scattered snow flurries tonight, so any hopes of holding off my farm fiending by planting something in the windowboxes or flowerbeds are dashed by the threat of bitter frost. Once again, in my life, I am required to do the one thing which I abhor. I simply have to wait.
I have a simple lesson the Universe is trying to teach me, cultivating the art of patience. Unfortunately I am a poor student at this, and I fidgit and fret through most days unnecessarily, hopped up on caffiene and my desire to completely control the world around me. Circumstances whisper to me this basic truth of letting go, yet I claw and clamor for some way to affect my fate in the present, like a wriggling toddler impatient to go. I know things will work out on their own, deep inside myself, that the chickens and the right job will come in their own due time, but I can't sit still. I am plagued with a need to do SOMETHING that will allow me to feel like I have control over my circumstances, or merely something with which to fill my time, of which I have a considerable amount suddenly that I am quite unaccustomed to.
Being outside and weeding my garden was my antidote for the antsies last summer when I was off work. Without a garden or livestock to tend, I find myself lounging with my dogs, sleeping too much of the day away and wasting what I should be languishing in, this peace and freedom to do exactly as I please with my time. I suffer, you see, not only from a lack of patience, but also a lack of imagination, as I cannot think of things to do to fill my hours other than write this blog on the hopelessly small keyboard of my cell phone as I wish for it to ring instead.
Complaining is not what I intended- I am grateful for so much: my health, my family, my writing, and enough money to help keep the farm afloat while I look for a new career opportunity (I don't really want just another "job"- I have had enough of those days.) I just need some distractions as I bide the time.
If you, readers and friends, can recommend some good books, interesting local places to visit or home crafts that are relatively inexpensive, I'd be forever in your debt. Maybe these things, combined with a lunch date here and there with a nearby friend, will ease my cravings for fur and fowl and stave off the boredom that is seeping into the cracks of my slightly dishevelled life.
Today, as I wait for some feedback from you friends, I am off in search of the company of rabbits and plants and perhaps a few books until the school bus delivers me some company when my daughter returns home. I have to feed the addiction somehow, and if it must be with window shopping, so be it.
