Happy New Year!
The New Year has to be a time to think about life and a time to reflect. In these last few weeks I have suddenly far more spare time than I am used to to reflect on everything: what we know have done well and what we should change for the better both at home and at work. I have also started knitting again as this is one occupation that can be done with a lower limb raised. The filing on my desk will have to wait a bit longer.
The last year has been so hectic for everyone in the household that we know it is time to try to change things. The daily workload has in all honesty become too much and I believe it has been good to step back [even on crutches] and actually acknowledge this.
Life events happen too and they can make one think even more and I belong to an online community called Purple Coo and this community has suffered a great sadness as one of the original members Woozle passed away peacefully in hospital yesterday evening after a major operation on 16th December.
I never met Woozle [although I read her posts including the last one she bravely wrote before she went to hospital] but many of the other members knew her in person and were very good friends. Woozle’s blog shines with her spirit and courage in the shadow of her illness scleroderma. She loved her husband, family, home and garden and despite her long illness was clearly a special person who enjoyed so much of her life, and she was very courageous. Woozle particularly wrote about how working the soil in a garden connects us to the land, she was so right about that and farming is the same just on a much grander scale. We send our deepest sympathy to her husband, family and friends.
I too, am a daughter of the soil and Jethro is undoubtedly a son of the soil, this particular attribute runs in our blood and is deeply imbedded in our genes. This fact has not helped any of us get a balanced life as our work ethic and attention to detail has added to the current overload. The old adage for farming folk has always been ” Farm as if you will live forever, and live as if you will die tomorrow”. [Read it here]. There is some real common sense in this. Farms are very big and complicated businesses which depend on both the seasons and very long term planning while coping with all sorts of unknowns on a day to day basis [ such as weather and animal health]. Over the last five years my Jethro has become totally overloaded by his workload with hardly any time off and that has impacted on every generation of the family, and it cannot be good for his long term health.
The challenge of the new decade will be finding a better life/work balance for all of us, and we do not yet know how we will achieve this but the journey we will take will no doubt be interesting.
However, we will have to learn to walk normally again before we can all run into a new regime. The first steps for me will be abandoning the crutches and then the aircast boot and getting my normal life back because at the moment Jethro has to do many of my jobs [dogs, horse, chickens, and driving] as well as his own. Cooking is getting easier as I can weight bear for short distances, but as ever in a full household the dishwasher always seems to need emptying. Why is that?
Arcadian Advocate 