I follow my year as a circle. Halloween, Shearing Day, Trail Ride Sunsets: these are my new Days of Grace. They are the tradition I want to hold dear.
These new holidays of my farm life are not replacing the holidays of my childhood. Christmas and Thanksgiving still have red circles on the wall calendar and make me smile. But this new grace has replaced the emotions I once felt on those days. You can’t wait in line at the mall to sit on the Great Pumpkin’s lap, kids. You need to walk out past the flocking crows and find him. The oldest religion in the world is out where the sun sets and rises and seeds come up to start the story all over again.
The longer I dedicate myself to this observational, spiritual farming, the more I realize certain things to be true: such as, you can’t run a small farm and not be religious. It won’t work. I don’t mean that in any conventional sense. A strict atheist can grow organic potatoes — but he’s still got rituals coursing through his veins. There are days of planting, weeding, and all sorts of tasks that require his devotion and attention. If an agnostic has a herd of Brown Swiss, the twice-daily milking comes as ritualistically as Islamic calls to prayer. These ceremonies, be they devotional or not, are necessary. To a farmer they feed the soul with hope and purpose.
So now I live this life, one shaped daily by the tasks and rituals of raising my own vegetables and animals. My morning prayers no longer slide up and down a string of beads but instead take the form of pouring 5-gallon plastic buckets of water into troughs. I start the day with hay bales, grain scoops, and the ardent observation of my furred and feathered congregation. Homilies come in low bleats and soft clucks. Chores become acts of blessing. My daily work is always heading toward a larger holiday: shearing, lambing, and bringing in this year’s ram. And it has all given me the gift of purpose in the most practical sense: Do this work and it will sustain you. Do this work and you are alive.
This newfound religion is a faith of constant motion. It is alive and on the hunt, panting and begging for just a few more kisses, a few more sunsets, a few more winters with a larder full of hope. It spends its Sunday mornings loping past those classical buildings with Tiffany windows, running through the tall grass beyond the graveyards and diving deep into the corn.
You can’t obtain salvation for your sins out there, but you can come to a quiet understanding of how little most of them matter. You can’t focus very well on original sin when your heart is soaring under a million stars. You will not get the answers to the meaning of life, but you won’t go home hungry.
Perhaps that is a good place to start.
Let the wealthy and great
Roll in splendour and state,
I envy them not, I declare it.
I eat my own lamb,
My own chickens and ham,
I shear my own fleece and I wear it.
I have lawns, I have bowers,
I have fruits, I have flowers,
The lark is my morning alarmer.
So jolly boys now,
Here’s to God Speed the Plough
Long life and success to the Farmer!
— “God Speed the Plough”, English Folk Song