How does rest FEEL? + zine workshop!
Happy almost spring! Winter has been lingering here in Oregon, but the daffodils are starting to open and days are getting longer. As always, if you just want my latest news, skip ahead to the end of this email! But if you want some musings, keep on reading …
As we [hopefully!] near the end of winter, I’ve been thinking a lot about REST, and what rest actually FEELS like when we’re getting it. Winter is a rest season — for the natural world, for farmers, for anyone who does outdoor-oriented work. Certainly, it was a forced time of rest for our ancestors who lived before electricity and indoor lighting!
Generally speaking, I think most of us associate the concept of “rest” with positive feelings. Rest should feel good, right? But … does it?
Winter certainly doesn’t always feel good to everyone. The days of forced inactivity and shorter days can certainly make me feel cooped up, antsy, and stagnant. Even though I acknowledge the importance of winter rest, I still find myself pushing against it. In these final days of winter, I long for the vigor and glow I feel at the end of summer activity and food.
I remember feeling something similar when our kids were younger and our farm was at its largest scale of operation. Our days were beyond intense — and, thanks to waking babies, our nights were too! More than ever in my life, I really needed to set aside a day of rest each week. For many years, I managed to [mostly] reserve Sunday for that purpose. I wouldn’t touch my computer at all (and this was before phones doubled as computers), giving myself a profound psychic break from at least some of the demands in my life. On these quiet days, I really wanted to feel a deep ease and sigh in my whole being. That’s what I thought rest should feel like.
Spoiler: it never really did.
Instead, I remember feeling kind of a discontent in my body and mind on those off-days — a stirring, a tumbling, an attention looking for something to attend to.
I would think to myself: “Okay, so this doesn’t really feel good. But I need this. I need to sit with THIS discomfort in order to give my body and mind a break and time to rejuvenate.” I assumed that some of the unsettled feeling WAS my body and mind doing the actual work of rest. That’s a paradox if I ever heard one: the work of rest. And yet that’s what I felt happening inside me. In order to get through the next week, I knew that I had to just BE with that feeling for a day.
In addition to [hopefully!] coming out of our winter hibernation mode soon, Casey and I are also having conversations about coming out of a sort of farming “sabbatical.” After 15 years of operating our farm’s commercial vegetable farm, we took a pause starting in 2021. We had a lot of reasons for taking that pause at the time, and we weren’t even sure whether it would be a “forever-pause” or a “for-awhile-pause.” We had poured all of ourselves into our farm for those 15 years and needed time to pursue other projects and adventures (including things like writing and illustrating!). At the time, we weren’t sure what role farming would play in our future outside of tending our land, growing for ourselves and producing a few simple cash crops.
Again, when I think of a “sabbatical,” I imagine something well planned and executed, filled with positive feelings of rest, relaxation and new growth. That hasn’t really been how our sabbatical has gone. Not exactly. In these last two years of pause, we’ve experienced plenty of growth — but our reality has been messy and uncertain, especially as we didn’t really know when or how our pause would end. We still don’t. And everything has been complicated by a sense of loss and grieving for the momentum, consistency, and community we’d built during those years.
But there has also been a sense of relief, which is what we needed after 15 years of almost year-round marketing and harvesting. We’ve noticed the shift in our bodies most profoundly during the many extreme weather events of the last two years. For once we didn’t have to rush to protect crops or animals from the vagaries of high heat or wind or ice. Our bodies themselves feel different too. Our hands are still like smooth leather (and probably always will be) but they’re no longer constantly chapped and marked with a million abrasions. Aches and pains have eased all around, and we’re sleeping better. Farming is romantic and fulfilling, but let us never forget that it is hard physical work. And that work takes a toll on people’s bodies.
So, even as we’ve been working on other projects, we’ve been resting and restoring. It hasn’t always felt good, but I think it’s worked. I think we’ve been doing the work of rest.
Our next steps are to assess what we’ve learned from these recent years — What do we want to retain from our rest? How can we do that and also grow food for others again? Much to figure out even as we continue to sustain our other newer projects and work!
… After I wrote a draft of this earlier today, I had a long conversation with another farmer-parent who volunteered that resting can feel hard uncomfortable for her too. I am not alone! I am so curious: What does rest feel like for you? Is it something you embrace or struggle to enjoy?
And, now, on to the news! …
1. I had a birthday this week! According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, my new age is the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” So, I think this will be an auspicious year for me.
2. Attention all local writer/creative types! Yamhill County’s Terroir Creative Writing Festival is back this year, on April 29, 2023 at the Chehalem Cultural Center.
Rebecca Minifie and I will be there co-leading a workshop on making zines. We’ll share about zines as a unique genre and how making zines can be a creative practice for opening doors to new ideas. Participants will make a mini zine during the session; supplies provided.
There are also many other amazing Oregon writers who will be leading other workshops! Register now here. Hope to see you there!
Want some zine fun right now? You can download Rebeca and my spring mini zine for free here.
3. I am writing a book about farming and parenting. Have I mentioned that? Yep, I’m still writing it! That’s the bulk of what I’m working on these days, but more projects are always simmering on the back burner.
Also, thank you to the many farmers I’ve connected with and interviewed recently. I’m not sure I’ll end up having time to talk with every person who has reached out to me, but I have gained so much from the ones I have. I’m honored by the ways people are sharing and trusting me with their stories. Being able to share such a wide diversity of experiences is going to make this book infinitely more powerful and useful to its future audience. So, thank you a million times over!
May the upcoming spring equinox bring fresh life and warmth into whatever projects await you in this next season!
With gratitude,
Katie