It consistently makes sense now.
Everything feels good. Every little thing we do, even the mundane moments feel right and natural.
We discovered that all we ever needed to do was to LIVE.
Three months ago, we were doing the OPPOSITE of what we are doing now. We went through the motions, always being “on” and thinking about the next item on our to-do list. We were so BUSY.
If our everyday life then offered an antidote, and it’s sometimes an all-too-familiar scenarios: a small balcony garden of edibles, periodic meet-ups with gardening friends to exchange seeds/seedlings (and occasionally homemade snacks), quick trips to the beach on weekends - but they didn’t do much to quell our longing for more.
Then something extraordinary happened, allowing us to live the dream: continue the “work” we love the most, but doing that in a place where the grass is greener, the breeze feels exceptionally cool and fresh, and reconnecting with the natural world is just across the window.
The first few days/weeks were quite shocking (in a great way!), as you can read here.
We have been accustomed to the busy life in vibrant cities that working and living on a farm and hearing the crickets and toads doing their nightly serenades can be very intimidating.
One thing we realised about our journey so far is that life on a farm can be a bed of roses; it’s just that you’ll have to work “hard” for it, but it’s all good work.
Well, except for:
“unsightly” feet calluses (but hey, humans have walked the planet barefoot for hundreds of thousands of years),
non-stop itching sensation from the irritation of grass blades on the skin (so bad that hubby needs to bathe every day with a vinegar solution),
repeated bouts of sunburn (and now hubby covers his body with protective clothing that makes him look so cool but raises the intruder alert for our furry four-legged babies Iki and Solo), and
a nagging “adult” allergy (for the first time like seriously, I never had it before!).
Nevertheless, it’s all great, fun, and even delicious.
Every day is delicious
When you have something important enough to get up early for, you just have to get up.
There are Iki and Solo and the need to release their pent-up energy. The chickens and their rambunctious early morning chorus and screams for breakfast.
And when most of us are hungry for breakfast, we ramble through the tall grass and search the backyard for wild edibles of bitter gourd, sweet potato and jute tops, and even mushrooms, ready for the picking.
We can hardly believe it, too, but there is always enough fresh, sweet-tasting, and delicious food to go around in our backyard. As a wild foods’ novice, we get insights from relatives who tell us about harvesting wild foods and learning which ones are available to us this time of the year, like this bagbagkong (edible wild vine flower), a highly seasonal plant sprouting at the onset of the rainy season.
But we also keep several patches of foraging garden spaces, but we leave them primarily to their own devices and let them thrive and take care of themselves.
We are finally (but slowly) beginning to reap the abundance of the land and the benefits of our hard work in just a span of three months! In addition to feeding ourselves, the gardens also support butterflies, birds, and seasonal insects who cannot get enough of broad beans, corns, and greens. I can’t blame them, though; nature’s bounty is indeed delicious!
There is always something to do
But not those kinds that require more of ourselves and less time for leisure, for reflection, for the community, for our loved ones.
Even amid the general stillness of the rainy season and the raging COVID-19, it’s hard to be bored and without something to do.
Not when you have high-energy pups keeping you busy, active, and grounded.
Not when you get to experience one of the most exciting cycles of nature – nests with eggs – and letting the birds do their thing while we sit back and appreciate from afar the wonders of nature.
Not when you discover native trees (including those that form part of childhood memories) that plant themselves wherever they like.
This is how our typical off-work day goes – nothing fancy, but it’s exactly what we needed.
Here to stay, forever
What started as a wishful thinking of living life differently last year has turned into what living should be all about, at least for us.
This place has everything we desperately crave in a forever home and gets us dreaming about our delicious future, which you can read here.
I won’t ever change this for the world.
Even when Solo and Iki get muddy, dirty, messy, and heavens, get bored every day that they terrorise our slippers and pretty much anything they can get their jaws and teeth on.
Even when we run out of things to talk about, we’ll just sit in the grass and admire the natural beauty all around us and feeling grateful for everything that brought us to this time and place in our lives.
We will have slow conversations about our permaculture dream, one filled with loving glances, touching, and presence. And all these with some lovely music being played in the background.
Don’t get me wrong. Our new farm life is not perfect, but maybe that’s why it is beautiful. Because we are now living an imperfectly meaningful and fulfilling life, a sense of community, an existence with a better purpose.
All the pieces come together ~ the reverberating buzz of the crickets, the swaying leaves of the mango trees, the sky changing within a blink of a moment, the early morning sun filtering through the windows. And then to wake up from the most comforting sleep and do all these again ~ the cosmos do smell great.
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