We have been really bad about writing in this blog. It is not that we don’t have a lot to say about eating less meat (please ignore the double negative) or about moving to Iowa someday in the not so distant future. It is just that life has gotten in the way and time continues to rush by dutifully like a Swiss bullet train.
I knew in the beginning when we started this that likely our motivation would wane - keeping a blog going is hard work. It takes dedication in addition to passion, the part of the equation that is a bit more difficult to muster when one is tired or hungry or wants to cook or needs to take the dog on a walk.
But we are here in Iowa for the month and so it feels like a good time to start back up. We are also now in the midst of the full blown Trump 10-ring circus (the end of Affordable Health Care, the exit from the Paris Accord, Russia, Russia and more Russia) - and so - back in the saddle.
Yet posting our writing is proving more difficult from rural Iowa however - the holes in the interweb are apparently a great deal larger here.
We also have been battling weeds in the orchard (successfully), broken machinery (in order to accomplish anything, you have to first fix the tractor, the mower, the four wheeler, the weed wacker, etc), and the blazing heat. It has been in the mid 90s, and while working outside on a farm may feel great, I really can’t sustain it for more than a few hours when it is so hot.
Which makes me worried. Maybe I am a crappy farmer. Maybe I am a spoiled city brat who needs AC and won’t survive on a farm. But maybe I am just human. Maybe everyone hates being in the blazing sun for hours running a weed wacker. Which is to say that maybe I am just coming head to head with the difficulties of this work and the reason so many people have stopped doing it.
Every time I come to this junction and turn back to the house to rest in the blissful cool air, I think of the fact that I live somewhere where I can actually go into the AC for a while. I can open the refrigerator and take out a cold drink. I can chill my watermelon until it is pure refreshing heaven. And it makes me think again and again of all the people in the world I have written about in Ethiopia, in India, in Uganda, who do not have those luxuries. Who have to farm in 90, 100+ temps, and cannot get out of the heat, ever.
And so, I am again grateful. Grateful this time for my privilege of cold air and refrigeration. It is indeed the little things, that are not so little for all of us, that mean so much.