It’s been 17 years since I lived on a farm.
I grew up on two farms… the first was 12 acres with forests, ponds, a river and lots of animals. I have memories of wandering into the woods by myself (or with whatever curious horse or adventurous cat felt like tagging along) as a child of under ten, and discovering. Plants, animals, and my own senses. Before I knew how to conceptualise them in such terms, I learned of lifecycles, seasonality, ecosystems, soil structures. Nature became a source of innumerable observations that wove themselves together in the mind of a child, to the point that they lost the status of having been learned, but were simply innate knowledge.
The next farm was 92 acres. Flat. Lots of scrubby brush from having been mowed back hard then left to itself. This is where I learned what Roundup was, and what it could do. As a child, I didn’t question this - my young brain hadn’t connected the systems and cycles I grew up observing on a wider scale. And I didn’t yet know how to question. The adults knew, but chose not to. The farm had a river that would become engorged in the spring and again, I learned all the twists and depth of this watercourse the way I did when I was a child.
These rivers are so clearly etched in my mind that tracing them the length of our properties is my equivalent to counting sheep now.
I believe that when something is so stitched into your identify, and the very makeup of your being, that it tugs at you. When you’re away from it, it feels like it’s a void or a part of you that was lost somewhere along the course of your life’s path.
So when I say it’s been 17 years since I’ve lived on a farm, I suppose I mean, it has taken me 17 years to get back.