The Wheel

For most of the time life seems to be a linear journey. Today is George Washington's birthday and it reminds me that most of life is a circular cycle. The wheel of the seasons has always seemed to me to start today. The seed catalogues are all here and the annual planning for a stupendous harvest has begun.
I have always dreamt of having a farm, with orchards and flowers and berry bushes and cows and chickens and cats (lots of cats) and one or two trusty dogs to chase the chickens and the cats. Tomatoes and basil stretching as far as the eye can see and artichokes and cardoons and fennel and hay and oats and french tarragon and lingonberries and strawberries and blueberries and raspberries and so many other things that I could spend an hour typing their names. I even composed a song about that dream once.
The first lines were:
Darling come away with me, way with me now
I've a farm in the mountains
And fields I would plow.
The song goes on and on as I added lines each time I would walk through the farm I worked on. It was a small dairy farm in New Hampshire with the barn across the road from the house owned by a tired old farmer with a twinkly eye and a need for help to bring in the hay. Who knew that hay required so many steps of harvest only learned by years of effort? When to cut it, how long to let it lay, how to crinkle the stems, why to bale it, why there is a cupola on the barn, all things that the tired old farmer was more than happy to explain. Wear a shirt when dealing with hay or spend the evening scratching. Then the end of the day comes. The Sun is setting and the farmer opens up the milk cooler. Inside is a large collection of Piel's beer in the wide mouth jar. Now I understand why the barn is across the road.
Dinner is on the long table in the kitchen and the farmers wife casts occasional disapproving glances at the diners who think that she is not aware of the milk cooler. She comments during dinner that they have no need to keep up their slavery to the cows. They have put enough aside over the years to move to town and take up an easier lifestyle.
Later while smoking on the porch, there is no smoking in the house or anywhere near the barn, the farmer explains "No dairy farmer will ever give up the cows. Their sweet breath and their gentle ways are never to be found in a town.". The lingering fragrance of New England boiled dinner, with beets, the quiet of a rural evening, and the smell of new hay all spoke of the richness of this man's life. He was wise to put things aside. Early in his life he put aside working for wages, put aside commuting, put aside office politics. He put aside worrying about the weather. There is no use in fretting about the weather. The weather will be the weather and there is nothing you can do about it. He did confess to worrying about the weather when the hay was mown and not brought in yet. He did not even concern himself with the organic farmer next to him or as he said "Mr. Whiskers and Weeds.".
It is too late in life to realize such a dream. It would have been nice. As he said "Farm work ain't hard, it's just that the work never stops.". How is that different from commuting to and from work, mowing the grass, painting the house, fixing the leaks, and lying down at eleven o'clock in the evening hoping to get to sleep quickly so you can rise again at five in the morning to begin the commute again? It would have been nice.