When the center of gravity shifts

We’ve been out of touch for a while. It’s been a challenging time to put to words as the world around us rapidly reorients, and moves like the blustery winds in this otherwise mild spring. 

At the start of the year, our center of gravity was already shifting. We ended our three month stay at the farm on Barbertown Idell Road nearly a decade later than expected. Johann’s mom finally moved into the cottage, and we moved to the “new farm,” five years later than anticipated. The intervening years between expectation and realization were some of the most challenging of our lives so far. We struggled to grow on abused land that was inhospitable, and live in neglected buildings that were uninhabitable. To paint it as a linear story of struggle to triumph would be too simplistic, when the reality was a vast spiral of open ended highs and lows, with all the familiarity and unexpected nuance of the passing seasons. And over those long years, just as the rhythm of rain weathers and wears, our edges softened, and Fields Without Fences took shape.

As well acquainted as we all are with the story of struggle, tension, and release, the seasons are full of infinite nuance, novel circumstance, and wild winds of change. What we return to still and again, is the web of relationship that connects us all to our shared humanity, and our interwoven biology with the living, writhing world around us. If we orient ourselves around this connection, the way a spider might anchor and weave between branch, and leaf, and lawn chair, the center of gravity may move with the wind, but the bonds do not break in the storm. 

We are struggling like so many of you. But, we are also planting, laughing, and learning about the complexities of connection like so many of you - anchoring ourselves to the soil, the trees, and the community that we support, and that supports us. It feels good to be back in touch.

From the field,

Lindsay & Johann

Fields Without Fences