Friends Visiting, Tractor Breakdown, Yes to Life
A house full of friends. Some of Amy’s close college friends came to the farm for the weekend with their families. I think I looked forward to it and enjoyed their company as much as Amy did. Gun shooting, 4-wheeler riding, campfire talking… good times. Counting our family, there were 8 adults and 13 kids sleeping under one roof. The kids explored and played hard nonstop. Thankful for time with friends.
Farm wise, I moved pigs to a new paddock in the woods. Still feeding hay to the cows but the grass keeps greening up. Yesterday our tractor broke down on me out in the field while feeding cows over a mile from the barn. It was a nice day for a walk back home though. It’s been giving me some trouble starting up, but usually once it gets going, it runs just fine. Until yesterday. I’m not sure what the problems is. It was acting like it wasn’t getting any fuel. I guess that means another trip to the shop.
While it rained Wednesday, we sorted meat and filled orders and herd shares. Hallie, Hasten, and Wren helped. Carter tried and then napped. Amy had to take Hallie to volleyball practice before we got them all filled. Always another day. She delivered meat to North Carolina yesterday, meeting some cousins around Charlotte who took most of the load of beef, pork, and chicken on down to families in the Myrtle Beach area. In this world spoiled by convenience, we are ever grateful for our cousins’ willingness to inconvenience themselves with a half day’s drive every three months in order to get ORVF meats to their friends and neighbors. We are grateful every time we fill orders and shares for the individuals and families who are willing to go out of their way to get our local pasture raised meats.
Feeding cows, I’ve been listening to “Yes to Life” by Victor E. Frankl. Here’s a few quotes that stood out from what I’ve listened to so far:
“Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning. Thus the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life.”
“Therefore, death forms a background against which our act of being becomes a responsibility. If we look at things that way then, essentially it may prove to be quite irrelevant to us how long a human life lasts. It’s long duration does not automatically make it meaningful, and its possible brevity makes it far from meaningless. We also do not judge the life history of a particular person by the number of pages in the book that portrays it, but only by the richness of the content it contains.”
“Death is a meaningful part of life, just like human suffering. Both do not rob the existence of human beings of meaning but make it meaningful in the first place.”
“The unique individuality of each human being is given value through its relationship with an overarching whole, namely a human community. Individuality can only be valuable when it is not individuality for its own sake but individuality for the human community.”
Here’s a poem that Frankl included in his book:
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was duty.
I worked and behold,
Duty was joy.”
Have a good week.
Will