Morning Musings

Yesterday morning as I fed the dogs, and sat sipping a cup of coffee while monitoring them to make sure Mac didn’t get pushed off of his meal by the others, I found myself musing about why I do what I do, and why do I write about it. 

A discussion with my eldest daughter, now a college student, about her ethics class brought some of it into focus.  It’s something I’ve known, but hadn’t put into words before that moment.  We were driving home from campus one day and found ourselves behind a vehicle that sported a bumper sticker stating that happiness is a journey.  I quietly snickered to myself, because I find that happiness isn’t really the journey but the place where I feel most content and joyful in life.  My daughter however was quite more vocal about her opinion.  After a good 3-5 minute rant, she summed it up that the journey isn’t happiness, it’s the end result and culminates in a place.

I had a mental flash of sitting in the barn milking a goat, and breathing the sweet scent of hay and animals; another of carrying buckets of warm honeyed water out to the animals, during a rare deep freeze in the winter; another of sitting on the deck in the sunshine watching the dogs play, and feeling the breeze dry the sweat on my back, a big glass of iced tea in my hand; another of cooking dinner and laughing with my family while fun music played loudly and we danced around while preparing a meal.  My farm is my place of happiness, because there I’m surrounded by family and animals and good honest work without office politics where there is a measurable definition of success: the health and growth of my loved ones, food, production of soap, the mowing of the lawn and the construction of useful items. 

My writing is certainly not anything special, but I find myself compelled to record the daily events that are the development of our little farm.  More than that, happiness is contagious and don’t we all have a little compulsion to share our joy with others?  Sometimes the news isn’t joyful in itself, but it is part of the bigger picture that is our farm.  It is real life in a more honest and basic brilliance. Living life closer to home doesn’t mean giving up pleasures – it means having more pleasure in your life where it counts most.