Farm Meditation #1 - Chasing Bulls

I’ve been thinking about writing something new––a series of “farm meditations,” moments that have inspired me or made me think about life in a new way while working on the farm or in the garden.

So in the spirit of adventure (and not letting my inner critic talk me out of it) I am going to publish these shorts each Saturday morning. Perhaps they will be a nice way to start your day. Or to end or begin your week, depending on your perspective.

Ideally, I’d love to hear from you about your experiences too (even if your life has nothing to do with farming). Please write in the comments about your experiences and how you dealt with them.

Thanks, as always, for reading. And a special thanks to my paid subscribers—you rock.

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Farm Meditation #1

The bulls got out the other day. The two 2000 pound animals walked themselves down the road about a mile and were seen in the creek by the bridge.

“Someone’s bulls are out, and they’re not ours,” the neighbor kid said to me when he rolled up on his ATV. “One of them is white.”

Yeah, one of our bulls is white. Shit.

When the cows get out, the world suddenly stops. You drop everything and become entirely focused on getting them back in. Usually we are alerted by phone, calls that send adrenaline through my blood stream and make my stomach hurt almost immediately.

And when the bulls are out, well, there is the extra added anxiety about how terribly everything could go, how the bulls are strong enough to go anywhere they want and hurt anyone they want, never mind how expensive they are (around $3000 a piece).

A pit of anxiety flashed in my belly. Cows out = things out of control in my mind, a spiraling of events not of my making. I instantly became a passenger in life, not the driver.

I called John and there was no answer. I called my sister-in-law who also lives on our road and told her we needed help. I jumped in the car, drove down the road and started to suss out the situation.

There they were down in the creek about 50 feet below, the waterway lined with brush. Brush - as in small trees, grasses and plants and shoulder high poison ivy (John is extremely allergic).

I finally got ahold of John, who raced over, and his sister and her husband arrived too. The two bulls looked up at the four of us blankly from down the steep embankment, standing in the cool water below, their faces revealing not a thing about how they got there and what they were thinking.

We charted out a rough plan of which way we wanted them to go. They were about dead center between the house and the farm (about a two mile span) and we decided to try to walk them back up the road to our house. John headed off into the brush to retrieve them, the sounds of man-curses and the beasts moving this way and that arising, but we couldn’t see any of them. Periodically the three would surface by the road and then be gone again.

Finally John got them up on the road and we started moving in the right direction. Three of us in vehicles darted past the bulls to block openings in the fence line, leap frogging from one space to another for the mile distance. John walked behind them, keeping them moving down the road, and for the most part, the operation went smoothly. About an hour and a half after the neighbor kid had arrived, we were back at the house, bulls in, fence reinforced.

The bulls back in, getting water

I realized in hindsight that, although the situation was intense and things could have gone horribly wrong, usually they don’t. In general, things in life that can go off the rails most often do not. So many of the scary situations that pass through my brain never come to fruition.

Even if it takes a while, we usually end up with the cows back in, contained and content.

This is a great life lesson. What if I allow situations to be a bit more out of control, and to let life sort itself out? To go along as the passenger for a while, not in charge of where we are going and where we will end up?

I can work to influence the situation, but the real control I have is to keep my anxiety under wraps. To breathe. To not expect things to resolve quickly. I can let my metaphoric bulls out (my bull shit?) and see where they wander before wrangling them back in line.

So this is my meditation for this week, to let go of the reigns just a bit and see where life takes me, even if my brain tells me it is negative and scary. To view unfortunate circumstances as just that— unfortunate—not catastrophic or life changing and seeing where it goes.

Perhaps you will contemplate this with me. Comments about your experiences are encouraged below.

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