Don’t Let Weeds Grow Around Your Dreams What does that look like? To be honest I looked at the message and thought it was nice, but didn’t take the time to really consider the advice. When we weed at the farm, it is for a few reasons. First, weeds can take up nutrients and leave little for the plants we want to grow, so we need to remove them to give those plants priority. Second, when we weed we are removing plants so we don’t get them mixed up when we are harvesting. Think if you ever got a piece of grass in your lettuce mix- that’s what can happen if we don’t weed thoroughly. Third- it keeps weeds from going to seed and spreading more weeds everywhere. Have you ever blown a dandelion and made a wish? That’s what can happen when we leave weeds going to seed and the wind blows. So what would it look like for weeds to be growing around your dreams in the first place? Is it the time and energy you give to things that aren’t your values? Is it “harvesting your dreams” and finding that you’re chewing bitter weeds in the same bite? Is it the proliferation of tasks and plans and ideas that you can’t stop even if they aren’t serving you? I wonder about what the action of weeding around your dreams looks like.. Here at Ranchito it might start with keeping up with our accounting and budget (thank you Mark for setting us up for success); not much can grow with messy financials. Next, it would be knowing the difference between our dream and the weed dreams… the media influences of perfection, the consumerism that always wants to be fed, the desire to grow unanchored by nature’s true time.. Third, it would be seeking out the waste in our system- finding tasks that can be more simple, organizing to reduce spending unnecessary energy, and most definitely snipping out self-doubt before it snowballs. I love how often the answer to my philosophical questions is the farmstand. When Christian and I first thought of the concept of our farmstand (our initial dream was to make it look like a porch, to the point we almost called it ‘Farmer’s Porch’) I don’t think we knew that the farmstand would be our weekly weeding and fertilizing routine of our dream. Each week we connect to people that share a common dream with us- REAL food, REAL conversations, REAL steps to reducing waste and loving what we have. SLOWING down the pace of consuming, TRANSFORMING transactions to interactions, and growing community one week, one conversation, one superb cucumber at a time. Each week we connect our dream gets clearer and stronger, but also the weeds that grew throughout the week get stomped down by each of the people walking into the farm. I think we can all agree that weeds will always grow (no farmer is throwing away their hoe after a day of weeding because they got them all), but we are lucky to have a bunch of hoes coming through each week to the farmstand, keeping us on track and if not weed free, pretty damn close. ;) What does weeding around your dreams look like?
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