Trying to Bring a Mother-Centric, Cyclical, Sustainable, Nature Inspired Approach to Farming

I have run my own business for the last nine years and for the past eight of those I have been working towards a cyclical and nature inspired approach. When I managed to give up the expectations of consistency and predictability and really surrender to the ebb and flow of my capacities in relation to the rhythms of nature and those of my own body, I thrived, I felt creative, joyful and fulfilled. Whenever I pushed against those rhythms I started to feel resentful and exhausted.

Then I had a child and had to figure it all out all over again (I'm still in the midst of this bit and likely will be for a long time). I had to reimagine how I wanted to incorporate work into my unschooling life with my child. The key to this was that my business had to become mother-centric. In other words my child always comes first and my wellbeing is a huge part of that. Without a calm, centred, healthy mother, she can't be a calm, centred, healthy child. It's a work in progress but it's that which I hold at the centre of my vision for how I want to incorporate work into our life together.

When my daughter was a baby I read an incredible book called Mothers and Others and another called Mother Nature by feminist anthropologist and Darwinian feminist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. It showed me that women have always worked alongside mothering. We don't have to surrender it all to give ourselves to our children but it does usually involve stepping out of conventional ways of doing things to make it work. I don't want to give up my role as a homemaker but I also want to follow my longings and desires for this life outside of the home. It's a dance and I'm tripping over my own feet often as I find my way.

Sarah herself built a glass element into her research lab so that she could watch her kids playing as she worked and be there when they needed her. I have home ed/unschooling mother friends who sculpt whilst their children play, make food and serve customers with babies strapped to their bodies and the most popular configuration? Tag teaming. I have a home ed mum friend who paints and tattoos before her husband starts work and after he finishes. They're both creatives so they tag team studio time. Josh and I do some tag teaming and I also do a lot of my work with my daughter there. There are times in the day when she just doesn't need me at all. Usually straight after breakfast until lunch she's totally immersed in a creative fantasy play scheme and my interrupting that would actually be detrimental. So I'm there but I'm doing my own thing alongside her. I work, write, knit, read, whatever the moment and my body's rhythm calls for. And then to the reason I started writing this article... I take her to work with me.

She started farming with me on my back at two and a half and now at three and a half she's got her own wheelbarrow and poo picker, is deeply bonded to the women I farm with and holds her own beautifully with a roster of responsibilities that she immerses herself in for hours on end. Some days are effortless, affirming and full of love, others are stressful, dysregulating and a bit too much but I wouldn't have it any other way. The world is full of red tape when it comes to children but women have been working with their babies and children on their backs since the beginning of time. Farms wouldn't be able to farm if they couldn't bring their children with them. Most of our grandparents were either helping or off being feral whilst their parents were immersed in working and homemaking. Hovering over our children whilst they play is an entirely novel and modern phenomenon.

It takes guts to make choices that go against the grain and I see so many powerful women doing it in so many different ways. There isn't one way to parent and I'm in awe of the beautiful variations I see, particularly in the unschooling and home ed world.

There are some professions that are easier than others in terms the space and capacity to fluctuate with our rhythms and centre around the mothers. Farming is beautifully placed to highlight the importance of a cyclical approach with its deep connections to nature and her seasons whilst also almost impossible to do in a cyclical way. And I say almost because we're giving it a damn good go. The animals need us to show up every single day at least twice a day and often more. We can't stay in bed when they need to be fed. We can't tend to an injury another day. We can't skip out on our crucial daily observations. But we can be cyclical in our consistency. We can dream into other ways of being.

It's pretty well known that farming doesn't really pay. The equipment, insurance, bills and feed/inputs are all horrendously expensive, the paperwork is endless and the pay back is shockingly low across the board. You have to work stupidly hard and diversify into every known area in order to scrape a living.

Combine this with a need to show up every single day and you have a recipe for burnout and poor mental health. I'm learning that mental health is a huge issue in farming across the board.

It can feel as though we have no choice but to keep going through deep exhaustion no matter what and in some ways this is true but we also all know that when the shit really hits the fan there's always a way because when we get really ill mentally, physically or emotionally, there isn't another choice. If we don't take rest it always takes us in the end. So we have to find ways to bring about longevity and that requires finding ways to incorporate an honouring of nature's rhythm into our work.

I've seen first hand how easy it is to slip into a corporate enterprise approach with the kinds of pressures farming puts on us. After I'd settled into my role on the farm a little I started seeing where we could become more cyclical and a huge part of it was utilising the team we have. (And I know that we are beyond lucky to have a team of us. Many are farming solo or with just a husband and wife team or similar set ups.) As a farm of women we chose to share where we are in our cycles each week and the capacity we have on any given day and then we either drop out a little or pick up the slack. If I'm bleeding I might not do as many wheelbarrow runs of poo, I might need to cut a day short. If I'm in the more energised part of my cycle I might offer to do some heavy lifting and work a little later. Sometimes we have to cancel plans we had that can be cancelled. Sometimes we end up doing far more than we had planned. It always evens out eventually.

This is the deep undoing that is needed in culture. The idea that if we slow down we'll fall behind is an exhausting myth. In my experience when we slow down we find deep resources. The kind that have longevity. When we slow down we are more likely to feel joy and pleasure and gratitude (after feelings all the feels we had been suppressing through perpetual busyness first!). When we feel these things we build our energy resources. We aren't as inclined to feel resentful or exhausted or burned out. It's not always possible but we need to get bloody good at really knowing the difference between what's crucial and where we can slow things down and step back.

The world has been built on the testosterone cycle. Show up every damn day the same way. Energy in the morning and rest in the evening. This is great... if you're running on testosterone but what if you're not? It might work for a while but then it won't. When you're running on a complex blend of oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone in varying quantities across a 3-5 week period of time, you need a different model. You need a model that suits you, uniquely and it can't be prescribed. Every single cycle is different.

What we need is the capacity to feel into our genuine energy levels and moods. Many of us are so used to pushing through to try to keep up with the testosterone cycle that we only know adrenaline and no adrenaline ie. firing on all cylinders or crashing and burning. When we stop trying to keep up and surrender to how we're actually feeling, we might find that we feel like shit for a good while whilst we recover. (And my goodness does it take a good while in my experience.) And then there's the magical bit. When we discover how to be truly sustainable with our energy. When we become so strongly boundaried about our cyclical needs because we've been to the other extreme and we've seen that the consequences were too high. We fall into step with the rest of nature and remember our ebb and our wane where we once were all waxing and flow.

Farming, mothering, being the family provider. All of these roles and many more offer little respite. They offer little space to breathe but it isn't possible to push through forever. So we need to go against the grain to find ways to make these roles sustainable. We need to unlearn all of the societal and cultural expectations that we have unconsciously taken to be true and make a world that allows us to thrive.

So this is me initiating a process. One of feeling into all of the possibilities of ways for us to incorporate cyclicity into our little farm and into my unschooling life with my child.

Carly x

Me, Emily, Kierra and my little farmer.

Wednesday work days. Our regular volunteering crew featuring my awesome farming girl gang.