A Single Value Guides Us
We really did take a leap when we decided to move to the farm. And it was a big one.
We weren’t farmers! We had never farmed! This was unchartered territory. We didn’t have the skills, the experience, the relationships, or the knowledge you need to run a functioning farm.
We believe that each of us can take small actions to nurture ourselves and our families. They don’t need to be complicated actions to start making a big difference.
To make it more complicated, we moved to the farm in June. The crops had already taken off and we were behind. This was our starting line.
We had a list of projects as long as you can imagine and it included everything from the playful to the critical to the ludicrous!
- Install new septic system
- Redo the electrical
- Rebuild the barns
- Buy chickens
- Buy more chickens!
- Learn how to care for a vineyard
- Tear things down
- Build things up!
- Buy sheep
- Learn how to raise sheep
- Learn to take care of bees
That was all in the first 3 months. And we haven’t slowed down. New buildings, new livestock, new products, new branding — the list keeps going. And there’s more to come.
Add to this other employment, raising kids, finding our feet in a new community, improving our French, keeping animals alive, joining community markets, launching new products like our wool pellets, and you start to get the idea of what our life was like.
Just a little while ago we were interviewed for a feature article in Country Guide magazine by April Stewart and she asked us how we make our decisions on the farm when there are so many moving parts.
We spoke a little bit about the mechanics of how we decide things but when we got to the heart of things, our decision-making comes down to a single value: Nurture. That may sound simple, but living in alignment with that value has been the single most potent thing we’ve done on the farm.
With every choice we make, we ask ourselves how this value will play out. How will this decision nurture the land, the plants, or the animals? How will it nurture our community? How will it nurture the people who visit the farm? How will it nurture our family, our marriage, ourselves?
It’s at the heart of everything we do and it keeps us aligned and focused in the midst of what is, truly some days, chaos.
We hope you can feel it when you visit (not the chaos, but the nurture!). We hope you can sense that there’s something else going on in the midst of all this farming and gardening and transformation. We hope that when you buy eggs or taste our honey, take a knitting class or walk the vineyard that you experience the feeling of being nurtured. It’s important to us.
We believe that each of us can take small actions to nurture ourselves and our families. They don’t need to be complicated actions to start making a big difference. In fact, it’s usually better to keep them simple.
We don’t claim any expertise in this, but we’re living it as best we can. And if it’s any help at all, we’ve pulled together a few ideas that we thought we’d share with you as you nurture your life. You might want to try one or two, or better yet use them as inspiration for what matters most to you.
You don’t have to turn your life upside down. But you can make sure you’re pointing it where you want it to go and we hope this helps.
One last thought. Sometimes nurturing is about what you don’t do, so give a thought to what you might want to remove from your life to create more room for what you need most.
Related Articles
Related
Traditional Welsh Shearing Cake
Traditional Welsh Shearing CakeOne 8 inch cake - good for 6-9 peopleThis Traditional Welsh Shearing Cake combines our Welsh heritage with our current sheep raising. It's something we celebrate at Leystone to connect us to our roots and to the community.Traditional...
Wool Pellets Nourish Your Garden
In the intricate tapestry of gardening, your role extends beyond that of a mere planter. You're a nourisher, a guardian of growth, a curator of life. Each decision you make is a brushstroke on the canvas of your garden's potential.From analyzing potential threats to...
Finding Joy in the Garden
I’m not a green thumb and no one has ever accused me of being a gardener, but I’ve definitely been spending more time with my hands in the dirt and bit-by-bit started finding joy in the garden. Over time, my experience in the garden has changed. Before we made this...
