Tag Archives: Cooperation

Community

17 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by in Aging, Elderhood, Fox Hill Village, Land, Nature

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Bill and I planned to live out our lives on Harmony Farm. When we contracted for long term care insurance, we insisted that it cover in-home care. We built a separate building, “the studio”, with our elder years in mind and even investigated whether it might be possible to be buried on our property.

I cherished living in harmony with the seasons. During summer months we slept with windows open, falling asleep to night-time sounds of owls hooting and awakening to our rooster’s loud crowing. We gardened, swam in the pond, walked in the woods, gathered herbs, picked fruit and harvested food. As weather cooled, we moved more inside, yet stayed connected to nature by eating food reaped from our gardens and continuing to care for the land.

As yearly cycles progressed and I anticipated turning 70, I began re-thinking our earlier plan. While Harmony Farm’s natural setting served us well during years of vibrant health and boundless energy, our bodies’ creaks and groans had become increasingly louder. Activities such as chain-sawing fallen trees and shoveling snow had once felt deeply satisfying. We enjoyed the physical work and felt smug about our useful accomplishments. Now inner wisdom screamed “caution,” warning of their price.

It took a while, but we finally admitted that we no longer thrived on the challenges of caring for our land. Swallowing our pride, we hired others to plow the driveway, shovel the snow and handle heavier jobs on the farm.

Concurrently, I began realizing that while the solitude of our home provided respite from the hectic pace of modern life, its isolation might prove too lonely in the years ahead. On my walks through the woods and while sitting by the pond, I reflected on what the future might bring and opened my heart to the possibility of change.

On one of my daily walks, I stopped, breathed in the earth-pine smells and looked around. I noticed abundant ferns growing on both sides of the trodden path beneath the canopy of trees. Light filtered down, nourishing the green world and me.

All of a sudden, a thought flashed into my mind. Like plants and trees, whose roots support and interconnect with one another, I need to live in community during my elder years.

Stunned by the enormity of this idea, I sank to a nearby log. And sat. Just sat.

Enveloped by the aroma of mossy dirt, I contemplated what this change would mean. Moving away from Harmony Farm – could I bear to separate from this beloved land? Adopting a different life style – what might that look like? Downsizing – how to choose what to keep and what to release?

Waves of emotion coursed through my body. The idea of moving, and what that would entail, hit me like a rock. Filled with panic, my heart thumped rapidly

Searching for safety, I hunkered down further to feel the solidity of the log beneath my buttocks and legs. Supported by the log, I focused on my breath, consciously breathing in and out, in and out, in and out.   After quite a while, the surges of feelings slowed, then stilled.

I calmed and decided to tap into the earth below my feet. Sending tendrils of awareness down, I sensed the vast network of mushroom mycelia running underground – between roots and rocks, hither and yon, connecting plant to plant, tree to tree, spreading out like a spider’s web, reaching far and wide.

Reassured by the reminder of interconnectedness, I realized that no matter where I live I would remain connected to Harmony Farm. And wherever I go, I will always be able to connect with nature.

I finally roused myself and slowly walked toward home along the woodsy trail. Passing the pond, I again felt pangs of what would be missed if we were to pull up roots and move. Yet as I watched the water trickle and bubble its way downstream, I considered entering life’s current and seeing where its flow might take me. Anticipating what living in community might bring, a tinge of excitement sparkled deep within.

Returning home, I decided to wait a few days before discussing my insight with Bill. I sat with my feelings and imagined living in close proximity with other people. What might that feel like? Where might that be? What kind of community?

Ideas percolated, feelings bubbled and then I checked in with my gut. Yes, it felt “right.”

When I shared my thoughts with Bill, he initially refused to consider moving from Harmony Farm. Over time, he gradually opened his heart to embrace the wisdom of living cooperatively with others. And so began our next chapter.

 

The Great Turning

04 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Whole

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People prefer not to think about the fact that we’re destroying our life support system.  Feeling helpless and scared, we protect ourselves from the awareness that we’re nearing a planetary tipping point, a point of no return for human life as we know it on Earth.  This deadening of awareness prevents us from acting in ways that could create a better world, a world where people live in harmony with each other and all of Earth.

Joanna Macy, an Earth activist and Buddhist scholar, proposes that active hope might enable the shift she refers to as “The Great Turning.”  While she recognizes that our industrial growth society depends on the ever-increasing consumption of Earth’s resources, with corresponding ever-increasing waste products which get dumped into, around, and on our Earth, she considers this to be an extraordinary time in human history – with the potential to move from an industrial growth society to a life sustaining one.

In her “work that reconnects”, Joanna guides people to acknowledge their pain for Earth and to open awareness.  She invites us to release the false sense of separateness and to experience ourselves as interconnected, part of the web of life, members of Earth’s community.

The Great Turning requires that we take responsibility for what is happening on Earth.  This entails releasing old structures and enabling life sustaining ways of being to emerge.  It involves creating a new world.

In this new world, partnership and cooperation will replace competition and strife, empathy and compassion will replace hostility and aggression, generosity and sharing will replace selfishness and greed, and the power of love will replace the power of force.  We will move away from striving toward perfection and aim to grow into wholeness.   Rather than disconnection and separateness, we will experience ourselves as integral members of the web of life.

Holding hope for the future, let us join together and help create this better world.  

Cooperative Edge?

18 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by in Nature

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After yet another Lyme disease infection, my husband and I decided to bring guinea fowl onto Harmony Farm.  These attractive birds supposedly eat ticks and we hoped that their presence would reduce our exposure to Lyme.  While we’ll never know what impact they’ve had on the tick population, for we continue to pull the little buggers off our bodies, we enjoy watching guinea fowl run around the land. 

When male cocks compete for a female, the two birds chase each other around a large area, running rapidly with their heads tilted forward, their bodies seemly still, and their feet moving at an amazingly rapid pace.  Round and around they go.  Sometimes they take flight for a while, then resume their on-ground race.  When one catches up with the other, he grabs onto the other one’s feathers, they scuffle a bit, then resume their race until one finally gives up the chase.

The victor wins the coveted hen, which is quite a prize for guinea hens are monogamous.  During mating season, the loyal pair roam around foraging together.  I dubbed one particular couple “Romeo and Juliet.” 

Living where we do, with predators all around, our once-large guinea flock dwindled down to five – one female and four males.  Then one evening, only four males were roosting in their coop when I locked them up for the night.  I worried that the female might have met her demise, but held onto the hope that she might be sitting on eggs somewhere.

Unlike birds who nest in trees, guinea hens lay eggs on the ground.  During summer months, guinea hens will often make a nest, lay an egg in it day after day, and when a suitable number of eggs are there (usually over 30), they “go broody” – which involves sitting on the eggs both day and night with a short break now and then to eat and drink. 

As a broody hen is like a “sitting duck,” she often falls prey to animals and hawks searching for a tasty meal.  And if she hatches her brood, they readily succumb to a variety of fates.  We’ve never had a flock born in the wild survive more than a day or two. 

A couple of weeks ago I saw the guinea hen, and heard her distinctive sound.  “Yea, she’s alive” I thought, “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”  And when the males dashed out the minute I opened the door to their coop, I assumed they were off to visit the mother-to-be.

Then yesterday, mother hen appeared with her brood.  She was sitting outside the locked-up coop, waiting.  And many tiny little bodies – white ones, speckled ones, various shades of black and white ones – poked out from underneath her body, came out for a minute, then popped back under.  Quite a sight to behold!!

I let the males out of the coop, and something amazing happened.  They gathered around mother hen and sat.  When I returned a little while later, I saw the baby keets moving from under one bird to another, to another.  The males were caretaking the keets, keeping them warm.  And not just papa.  All the males.

In all my years on the farm, I’ve never seen such a cooperative caretaking effort.  The baby keets trusted the males, seemed to already know them.  And the males adjusted their bodies to accommodate the little keets moving around beneath them.  They also pushed them under their bodies, just like a female hen behaves.   

As the day progressed, I watched the whole flock move around just a bit.  Like mother hens, the males called the keets over when a morsel of food was found.   The keets ran back and forth between all the adults, under them, and between them.  Often the mother hen was up and about, preening and eating, while the males were caretaking the babies, giving her a break.

Reflecting on this unusual behavior, I think about the Great Turning, where partnership and cooperation will hopefully replace competition and strife.  I wonder, could these guinea fowl be figuring this out?   Could they be demonstrating that the path to survival lies not along the road of individual separateness, but on the path of harmony, of cooperation, and of sharing?  

Whatever its reason, I hope that this cooperative approach might bode well for the adorable little newborn keets.  Dare I hope that these babies will survive?