"Farm" Teaches Me ~ Different Meaning Of A Word



The Barn In A Rare Rain

All of my life I have loved words.
They have given me knowledge, insight, skill(s), history, comfort, challenge, stability. I am one of the geeks who can't contain my joy when the new year of 'word for each day' calenders arrive each December! lol  I admit to being one of those who flips thru the dictionary and thesaurus as a recreational activity (yes, really).

I adore the dance of word & phrase, painting visuals with the colors of the alphabet, applied with the aid of pen, paper, typewriter, keyboard. Books written by others are old and trusted friends. Most found filled with notes I've added from each reading. Pages marked during each search for fact, truth or answers to the unanswerable.

Words.

Meanings.

Me.

The way it has ever and always been.

Then came the farm. Nature observed. Reality on steroids.
Not stock market and fashion, but rainfall and rain-fail.

In your face - it's up to you - kind-of-reality.

And initially, a new bevy of words. From tractor technical to crop cultivating. An immediate "need to know" new vocabulary. But with time, as I was receptive and ready the farm began to teach me the more subtle, intricate word meaning lessons...

Take the word brooding. 

PF (pre farm) I (and the world) assigned it a fairly singular undesirable meaning. Catagorized it as a negative word. Akin to moody, depressing, oppressive, even obsessive, dark, difficult.

 

But when the Farm began to speak of chickens - brooding chickens - the meaning altered remarkably.
Suddenly, magically, brooding/broody becomes about goals, dreams, future.  "Farm speak" brooding describing hens that are sitting on eggs in their nest. Things hoped for. Things yet to be.

I understand now that to 'brood' is also: to pay attention, to care for, to aspire to future outcome. Progress. Planning. Working, heart & soul (and feathers if you're a chicken, lol) towards creating your future. Day by week by month by aching back and cup of coffee thru storm and sun as you plan and sometimes as you do not plan.

The farm shows me the lessons of the broody hen. Dedication, tending and waiting with no guaranteed outcome. I may patiently brood my nest of egg-ideas-plans-dreams and have no chicks. Or I may have significant success. Or a mix of some success amid some loss. But there would be no success without the attempt without the brooding. I've learned (and continually re-learn) the efforts must be based on the goal, the dream, the hoped for future outcome. The effort can not be based on controlling the outcome, or any guarantee. The farm continues to help me grasp the truth that life is comprised of goals and gifts amid hard work (brooding). But not on guarantees. Never on guarantees. Life, like nature, is far too fluid for guarantees. Work hard and long with hope and anticipation ~ not with expectation, righteous demand ,entitlement or attempts at dictating outcome.
*Leave the attitude at the barn and farmhouse door*

The farm, teacher that she is continually expands her role in my life education.
Right down to the expanded meaning and life-application of
my beloved

words....

What cleverness and insight walks amid these fields and woods, barns and grain bins. One hundred and forty two years of the past, the present and the future pause while I observe and and learn these lessons from this farm.

Another excerpt from 'the book'  :-) copyright FIDF 2012If you'd like to know when the book becomes available contact me via the blog profile and I'll add your email to the notify list