Success is Launched in Winter – Part 1

30 12 2010

Sessions with the Farmer’s Wife:
Conventional Wisdom for Contemporary Life

January 2, 1991:  Colder and snowing when we got up. -4°. We got about 4 inches of snow. Rest of day was clear and it did warm up some.  Had Jim, Karla and boys over for noon meal and we discussed salaries, etc.  I dressed in snowsuit and walked 1 mile.  – Leona, Personal Journal

The Winter of your life has been around for a while now and this morning, you wake up only to find it’s colder than yesterday and there’s 4 more inches of snow piled on your already frozen field.  It’s one of those experiences when you think it can’t get any worse…and then it does.  How will you ever accomplish anything when everything seems to go against you?  Should you go back to bed, pull the quilt over your head and hope you sleep until it’s over?  Not at all!  Remember we’re embracing Winter and gaining wisdom about living life better during this season.  If you go back to bed, you’ll miss out on the “rest of day was clear and it did warm up some.”  Besides, although the ground is too cold and hard to plant seeds, success is launched in winter.

New Year’s comes in the dead of winter, encouraging contemplation and resolutions.  This is the perfect moment to pour a cup of tea, grab a notebook and pen, and find a quiet, comfortable place to think.  In the farming days, we would sit down at the kitchen table (furnished with Norwegian cookies and Tropical Punch Kool-Aid) to discuss what decisions we made last year, which ones worked, which ones didn’t, what new options are available, what old ideas we’re going back to….hours worth of discussions, including, as Leona’s journal mentions, salaries and finances.  The immobilizing sub-zero weather outside had no effect on what was happening on the inside where it was safe, warm and full of deliberations and expectations of returning life.  Brainstorming was at full throttle!

These dialogues included several categories, all of which are applicable to contemporary life.  They are:
        1. Reflect
        2. Evaluate
        3. Investigate
        4. Plan
        5. Prepare

The next few blogs will walk through each of these topics, assisting this season of contemplation that New Year’s brings.  Gaining insight and making beneficial, efficient, healthy resolutions and plans are our goals.  It’s a good thing winter is long because we’re going to need some time to do this well.  After all, launching success is what winter is all about.

Grain of Truth: Cookies and Kool-Aid are perfect partners with New Year’s and Winter to plan for the future!


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Seasons with Strength

21 12 2010

Sessions with the Farmer’s Wife:
Conventional Wisdom for Contemporary Life

December 2, 2005: Only 2 degrees this morning. Shortly after noon I went out to shovel snow off the front driveway. It had been snowing for a while and it was beginning to blow more. I had wanted to go to town but thought it not wise. Snow continued all afternoon.  – Leona, Personal Journal

Jim, Me & Our Yahoos

I want to discuss this Victory Garden of Life idea further, but let’s do that a little later on.  Right now, it’s winter on the farm, which is something I don’t want you to miss out on.  In my real-time life, I presently live a pseudo-city routine as a Licensed Professional Counselor in Colorado Springs.  My husband Jim is an Administrator of a home health care agency, and our 4 children — Anthony, Marcus, Andrea and Jozlyn – are old enough to motate themselves around life and even get married in March.  We officially moved from our family farm in 1997, but have continued to wander back-and-forth there for work and play throughout the years.  In order to remind me of the day-by-day activities of farm life, my mother-in-law graciously loaned me her yearly journals that have brief, yet valuable, remarks about each day’s events since as early as 1965.  I have a dozen years’ worth of entries – sessions with another true farmer’s wife – in my possession and will include one in the opening of each blog, just as I did today.  My purpose in doing so is to add authentic agricultural ambience to these reflections and, as I said, right now – it’s winter on the Iowa farm.

No Fieldwork Today

Winter is a curious season of life. Have you ever really looked at the deciduous trees during the winter months, how about the garden remains or the frozen tundra once known as a bean field?  Be honest now, if you didn’t have years of experience with winter turning to spring, would you really expect these brown, barren twigs to ever show signs of life again?  If you stepped onto a snow-covered field – especially during a mighty blizzard — with no knowledge of the seasons of farming, could you seriously recommend that a person invest an entire year’s wages on the bet that something will grow there?  It’s preposterous.

Winter Season

Winter comes in our personal lives, too.  Most often, we interfere with winters.  We don’t allow the cold, barren days, weeks and months to even exist.  We somehow think every day must be a hot, humid July day that grows the corn tall and full.  That must be true success!  But it’s not so.  When we try to work in cold, hard, frozen ground, we bust our equipment on that solid tundra.  We return to The Yard (which is the where the farmer lives and stores all of his farm equipment, supplies and family), frustrated and disappointed because nothing worked like we planned.

Leona’s entry today is a perfect example of this idea.  She had a plan.  But Winter had a plan that was bigger than hers.  She could have frankly said, “I planned to go to town (which is an event where The Farmer’s Wife drives several miles to a populated area in order to gather groceries and “run” all of her errands), and I will indeed go to town!”  But she “thought it not wise”; she has lived with Winter long enough to know that Winter is bigger than she is and sometimes it is best to work with the elements and not try to defy them.  Wisdom understands and respects the seasons, a skill that promotes mental health and adds strength to living.

Grain of Truth: Embrace winter (or any season of life for that matter) for a season with strength.


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