Big news!
The 2023 American Peony Society National Convention is visiting our farm!
Over the past couple of years I sometimes let myself dream that someday the APS Convention might visit our farm.
But folks, I never imagined it would be - well - so soon!
When I first learned the news I was elated.
For about 2 moments.
Until I thought,
“Oh no. Our farm just isn’t good enough.”
You see, we’re a working farm with:
Only about 4 acres of fields. (We’re still really small).
Compost piles. (No less than about 6 of them).
Animal pooh. (Fertility happens. And it sticks to your shoes).
Beds where the weeds have won the war.
Unfinished gardens we’re still planting up.
An area I call “The Ugly Corner” where we store animal housing we’re not currently using.
Now, instead of focusing on all of our insufficiencies, I could have remembered that most farmers start small just like us.
I could have reminded myself that undoubtedly every gardener has - at some point - looked at their plot and thought, “Well now, THAT doesn’t work.”
But no, I forgot those things.
Instead I went into self-important, hyper-aggressive, “I-will-get-this-right” planning mode, quickly creating my “Conference Preparedness Plan.”
In this document I committed myself to:
Putting in 4 new peony showcase beds. (In less than 2 months).
Adding 5 new gardens around our farm buildings. (Also in the same 2 months).
Eradicating “The Ugly Corner.” (Nevermind that we literally have nowhere else to store this housing).
Expanding our current weed mgmt strategy to every bed on the farm.
Executing this entire list while still staying on top of all the rest of the usual farm and family stuff.
Come Spring 2021, I got after it.
Start perennials for our decorative areas and gardens?
Check!
Start prepping and planting the new peony and other decorative beds?
Check!
Get on top of all those weeds?
Check-ish? Which is to say - we made some serious progress. But really - is anyone, ever on top of ALL the weeds?
Until one morning last month, when my waking thought was
“This is garbage.”
Because hustling everyday to check things off a to-do list just to prove to myself that yes, this farm is “good enough”?
This is not why we farm.
We farm because working with plants brings my shoulders down, clears my head and returns me to myself.
More importantly, we farm to serve the many others who also take their broken bits to the garden, only to find wholeness there.
We did not start this farm to showcase fleeting, unachievable perfection that doesn’t even meaningfully contribute to the gardening community we love to serve.
In all my insecurities about our farm, I temporarily forgot perfectionism’s cost.
It’s too expensive to frantically remove each weed, if that means one misses the change in birdsong throughout the day.
Or forgets to notice how the light on the leaves changes tone as we move through the seasons.
In short, my desire to be “good enough” was costing the one thing that gardening - more than anything else - gives me:
the ability to be present with whatever is.
I’m no longer prepared to pay that price.
So now, with the season winding down and the conference coming in less than 2 years, the farm is a mixed bag and I’m deeply comfortable with that.
RIP Preparedness Plan
The “Preparedness Plan”?
It’s in the compost.
Doing much more good for this world there than it ever did in my over-zealous hands.
All the new gardens?
We prepped some new spaces, got a decent number of perennials planted, ran out of steam (and budget!) so just filled the rest in with colorful annuals.
And for the first time, we have chairs right in the garden. No decking or patio yet but maybe that will come with time.
But, even if it doesn’t, I already get to have my morning coffee there while I watch to the day come alive
Frankly, these areas have a long way to go. But perhaps being “done” was never the point anyway.
And The Ugly Corner?
Yep - still there!
And still…
Just. So. Ugly.
Now, a month after shredding the Preparedness Plan, I fully accept that we will likely be one of tthe newest, smallest, least landscaped farms the Conference has ever visited.
But we are here for it anyway.
We’ll be greeting and listening to each guest.
And if any one vents about the list of things they feel they can’t get right in their own garden, we’ll empathetically nod and ask,
“Would you care to see our Ugly Corner?”