I woke up this morning and started working on the family tree some more. Actually I should say TREES. I have over 200 names listed now. Mianly in the Lott and Peacock and the Holland and Sims Families. I actually have a lot more work to do on the Hollands. So by the end of the day I may be around 300 strong! It's amazing to me and I love all the stories I am hearing.
I have been thinking about the coming fall season and I get quite excited because this is my favorite time of year. It's been so hot this summer I promise to never complain about being cold this winter! I am planning to spend some time up in Rabun Co., Ga. this fall. I have been mapping out some farms, vineyards, and wellness centers to visit with Lee Ann. I am most excited because Lee Ann, my daughter, is back in school at Auburn to complete here studies in Horticulture. I think she has a very bright future ahead of her in horticulture, organic farming or green house management what ever she chooses. I have long told her to choose a career that pertains to something you love. If you don't love what you do every day you are not happy. Momma's love to see their babies happy! That's why we live and breath everyday.
I have been trying to get up everyday and name all of the things that I am grateful for and I have been feeling much better and life has been going a little smoother. 2008 proved to be the worst year of my life and I am still trying to pull myself up by my shoe laces. At least now I am in a squat position! I'm up off the floor and out from under the bed! The latter stages of grief maybe.
Well this morning as I was searching for farms in Rabun Co. I found http://www.localharvest.org/ ....Organic farms within 500 mile radius of New Orleans were listed. Well I started clicking on farms guessing where they might be based on mileage listed as distance from NOLA. I hit upon a farm site in Wisconsin. I want to share todays blog from Trautman Family Farms with you all. Mr. Trautman, or Mrs. not sure, summed up my thoughts and feelings completely for me today. He tied it all up in nice neat little package for us. If you read this and you agree please go to his website and comment to him.
www.localharvest.org/blog/15556/entry/an_explaination_a_mission_a
Trautman Family Farm (stoughton, Wisconsin)
The Grass-Organic Life in Wisconsin!
25 Aug · Wed 2010
An Explaination, A Mission, A Passion and a Question
I have, over the past few days, specifically, made it a point to be grateful. To look around me, and reflect, how beautiful life is, and how many gifts I truly receive each day. A friend of mine, Tim Williams, told me this, he learned it somewhere, that if you start your day by being thankful for five things, you will have a great day. I read quite a bit of Dr. Wayne Dyer, and he is big on gratitude, too. And I have seen, in people I respect, and desire to be more like, that they, too, spend more time in gratitude than 'the norm'. The opposite of gratitude - is complaining - about - everything.
Because the world around us, the culture we've built, is one to bitch about everything. Nothing is right. If an alien - a spaceman - came down and secreted himself amoungst us, it would be easy to see how he might report back, "these people are miserable, what a terrible place this planet earth is". By how we talk - how we talk about the problems, endlessly; I look at it anymore that people actually entertain themselves bitching about the world around them. But somewhere along the way, I moved from being just like that, to desperately wanting to ask, at the end of a good long scather about - oh - healthcare, the economy, the housing market, jobs, Iraq, Afghanistan, pollution, the government - I desperately want to ask - "so what are you DOING about it?". I don't ask - because I know the dumb stare I'll get - and I'm fearful then that I'm making them uncomfortable. No one wants to feel uncomfortable now, do they? So then I'm marked - I won't play nice and join in the fun; bitch about it all, nod my head in agreement, and be confident that the problem lies completely outside present company. We, ourselves, are blameless. "Nothing I could do!". It's the rich. It's the corporations. The government. Not our decisions - the ones we make every day - but someone else, somewhere else, out of reach of us.
Somewhere along the way I accepted in myself that I am changing the world. As I sit here now and breath in and out, I am changing the world. By such a tiny amount - but how do I know - that perhaps I was given gifts - that I have been ignoring the signs, the encouragements of those gifts for a lifetime - that God - has been so gently, so persistently been trying to convince me to use, when instead, I deny them. And I bitch. A significant amount of time in a life. And by accepting that as my culture, our culture, I look at the world in a different way - I fill it with bad, because that's all I talk about, hear, see - I invite it every day through the news, the conversations I have with people. I make - I - Make - the world a little worse place.
Or, I choose to make the world a better place. To reject the idea that the world is a bad place at all. That somehow it fits someone elses agenda - manipulation of me - to buy something, to not do something, to do something - to live in fear, and make stunted ill informed choices - including doing nothing - in fact, that being the most often - doing nothing - feeling slighted if one second of my oh-so-earned leisure time is infringed on - becoming so incredibly self involved in the trinkets, the baubles, the nothing of a lifetime. A new car, a vacation, a new electronic device, a new amusement; advertising tells us daily how we cannot be happy unless we do THIS. Buy THAT. And we are on the treadwheel for life - never quite getting there - to contentment - to satisfaction, because then we lose the will to buy, we might find the energy to do something that helps one another, rather then the one another purchasing a service for that, buying a device for that, supporting a candidate that says he will provide that for free.
Somewhere along the way this beautiful farm of ours changed me, as much as I changed it. Perhaps the faith I had in nurturing it, putting all my good intentions, all my hope into what I absolutely convinced myself could be a better future - and did the same with my children; that I would not accept 'that's how kids are today', that 'the education system has failed us' and on and on and on - I took responsibility, I took consistent action, considerable sacrifice over time, and I have done so long enough to see that it does work, it doesn't have to be 'that' way one tiny bit.
It's so easy to say, I'm just one person. I can't do anything. But now I train myself to think about all that I do - I ask myself this question: "So what if everyone thought that same way, would it be a better or worse world?". I can talk myself into thinking - boy what a monkey's uncle I am - everyone else is 'doing it' - and here I am denying myself that thinking I'm changing the world - and I can convince myself very easily if I let me - that the smart play is to go along, get what I can while I can, it's a dog eat dog world out there, no one's going to look out for me if I don't - but it's not true at all.
As my mind has changed, I have attracted into my life, beautiful, giving people. The rate of change has increased; my appreciation and belief in the wonderment of it all - and the radical humility that I didn't do this - but my creator - God to me, perhaps it's Buddah or Allah or even Nature - just something so powerful beyond yourself that defies explanation.
If I allow myself to be happy then I am; if I insist on being unhappy I am, if I decide there is nothing I can do there isn't, if I do, there is, if I choose to make my life about service to others I will, if I decide that it's all about me and my needs then that is what it will be.
I choose love.
I choose service.
I choose to surround myself with people that want more than anything to make a better world for their children - for your children - for everyone's children, and I will not be convinced otherwise by any one or any thing. I will stumble, I will fall, I will cry more than I ever thought I would, but I will also feel joy I never knew I could. I will give even when I know the receiver will show no gratitude. I will give a thousand times - if only to know the chance exists that it will help - I will be smart - and know that I want to do the most good in this life - and so I've got to learn, adapt, and grow, and be more efficient - choose my words better, feel humility deeper, speak from the heart more often.
I choose love.
Who will join me?
I say yes how about you? Let Mr. Trautman know if you will join him.
www.localharvest.org/blog/15556/entry/an_explaination_a_mission_a
