Fort Hill Farms' Blog

Where my strength was born

herrootsrundeep — Mon, 16 May 2011 11:15:58 +0000

Yesterday I was thinking “why is it that I’m known for being such a strong person”. Why does everyone think I’m such a hard-working girl, why does everyone say “I’m tired already” when they see the landscape here? Then, I remembered! ahhh! I truly am “the grand(daughter) of a calfherder” which is what my maiden name really means–O’Leary. It’s not w/o a lot of hard work that I earned that name. LOL. So, now, when customers come, I try to look like I’m NOT WORKING AT ALL! They say “you choose your parents (grandparents). I just wish I knew my name MEANT “granddaughter of a calfherder” when I was little–I would’ve gone more willingly! Well, actually, at 12, I decided “to go willingly” into this great lifestyle that defines me. I have a taproot that penetrates far deeper than what I can describe to you. Yesterday, I actually tried to put myself in my place of my grandfather coming from Nova Scotia, with a borrowed “50 dollars” to take the train to RI, to a town where I now own 188 acres. Then, pictured my father working, at 14, where he got paid WITH A CALF! THE GOLDEN CALF! Believe it or not, she was a golden Guernsey, too–can you believe it–you can’t buy this! Plus, now my daughter, 17, raises a golden Guernsey in her horse barn! Plus, we have alot more Guernseys on the farm too. Facebook Fort Hill Farms & you can see Kies leading around her calf. The customers on Sat. were very shocked when they saw Kies come around the corner leading her Guernsey, like it was common practice–it is!

Fort Hill Farms—”The Farmer’s Cow”–it’s authentic, we’re authentic, authenticity runs in my veins. That’s why people think I have strength, I value the concept of legacy. The Farmer’s Cow was started by people who gained strength from their deep taproots, and people are now appreciating it. But, when Peter and I started farming in 1989, farmers weren’t valued, and no one wanted to “visit” a farm! It’s so surreal now to see so many people visiting and being so surprised at what we’re doing, when we’ve been doin it all along!

Moo-tivation in unlikely places!

herrootsrundeep — Sat, 07 May 2011 09:35:14 +0000

Severiano Ballesteros (pronounced buy-yuh-STAY-ros) was born in Pedreña, where his father, a former Spanish-champion rower, was a farmer. His three older brothers, Baldomero, Manuel and Vicente, were golf pros, as was his uncle Ramon Sota.

As a boy, he batted stones with a homemade golf club on the beaches near his family’s stone farmhouse. When he was 8, his brother Manuel gave him a 3-iron, and he began to caddie at a prestigious golf club in Santander, near his home. He won the caddie championship there at age 12 with a 79, sneaked onto the course at night to practice his shots, quit school at 14 and turned pro at 16.

Wow, I love to find moo-tivation everywhere I look! I’m always sufficiently astounded!

Focusing on Crocusing!

herrootsrundeep — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 09:52:53 +0000

Two speakers at the SxSW interactive conference in Austin Guber& Schwartz) were talking about being sustainably productive by balancing periods of fully absorbed attention with intermittent renewal.
Peering out into the vast “Texan” hall, they feared the future: a sea of the digital elite hunched over blinking technologies, tweeting and texting as they talked.
Here’s what some of them were saying, all in 140 characters or less:
“I’m splitting my attention between @guber & tweeting that 2 B gr8 U have to be willing to suffer/practice.”
” Schwartz tells SXSW attendees to go to bed earlier. Tough sell.”
“How can Schwartz stay sane giving a speech on focusing on task at a time while the audience is on their iPads/iPhones at same time?”
I wasn’t so worried about my own sanity — I was only doing one thing at a time, after all — but I was a little concerned about theirs. We’ve truly entered a world of nonstop input and output.
What exactly will it take to seize back control of our lives? We need a series of deliberate practices to counter the powerful forces accelerating our lives. I’m interested in this, because my recent query has been “To blog or not to blog?”. By blogging, am I just giving people more things to read in their busy lives, or am I giving them something to think about? Am I building awareness or wasting my time?
Imagine for a moment that you’re downsizing from a house to an apartment one-third the size. Everything you have seems necessary until you realize it simply won’t fit in your new place.
There’s always room for less.
You likely already have too much to do, too much information to absorb, and too many choices to make. If so, your challenge is learning to say no far more often — “no” to more projects, more meetings, more emails, more tweets, more Facebook updates, more purchases, more friends, more “likes”, and more fans and followers.
Prioritization isn’t just what you want to do, it’s increasingly what you ought not do. What can you delegate and eliminate, take off your plate or put on the back burner in each dimension of your life?
If you’re going to take on something new, what are you going to stop doing? How are you going to be more ruthlessly selective?
If you know me, you know I study Latin & Greek. Curate comes from the Latin curare, meaning “to care” — in this case for yourself. Think of this as a Not To Do list.
Create more space in your brain — and your life.
Be aware. Be amazed. Be conscious. You don’t need “new”, you need to be aware of, and amazed at, what you do have.
We also need to create more space in our days. To make sense of our increasingly complex and demanding world, we need times during the day when we step back, reflect on and metabolize what we’ve just taken in. Come to the farm, see things that are “growing”, “flowering”, “being”, or I should say “Beeing”! When you leave your house, do you “see” the flowers in your garden, are you “amazed” at them?
We need less data and more context, less volume and more depth. That can’t happen if we’re running from one meeting to the next, and emailing, texting and tweeting in every moment in between. Where can you insert purposeful pauses?
Do one thing at a time as much as possible.
Human beings aren’t designed to do two cognitive tasks at the same time. We’re more efficient when we do activities sequentially rather than simultaneously. We also do higher quality work when we’re singly focused, “Focusing on Crocusing”!!
.

Not sufficiently astounded

herrootsrundeep — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 09:27:53 +0000

Do you ever find yourself not sufficiently astounded? Or even worse, not even noticing you’re not sufficiently astounded?? It’s amazing–I was skiing from one field to the next, and looked up, and boom, thought “wow, this is beautiful! Is just standing here looking at it ENOUGH??” I guess that’s how all the high-rises got on Waikiki Beach–the Hawaiians appreciate their land by looking at it, and going surfing in the ocean to look back onto the beach. So, American construction companies thought “no one’s appreciating this beach, so I’ll build a high-rise on it, and then MORE people will appreciate it, and proof of that will be how much money they will pay to come look at it, and stay in my hotel”. Then, another construction company saw how many more people were now looking at Waikiki Beach, and paying for the beautiful view–as proof that they were appreciating it, so that construction co. built a high-rise hotel, and people paid more money to stay at that one because that one was taller and more luxurious. But, then a third construction co. saw that people behind those tall buildings could not see the ocean, so he built a taller building behind both of those two, so that EVEN MORE people could enjoy the view from pretty far away! Then, a restaurant company thought “more people could enjoy the view if they could EAT while enjoying the view”, so they built a restaurant, and people came and paid a lot of money to eat while they enjoyed the view. Of course, that didn’t have enough room for everyone to eat and enjoy the view, so restaurants kept being built, the construction companies said so that “more people can enjoy the Hawaiian scenery”. Pretty soon, no native Hawaiian could afford to enjoy their view–and they had to go inland and sit on the rivers to enjoy the water. Now, if you go to Hawaii, you can see people in the house watching t.v., because they are Not Sufficiently Astounded.

To Blog or not to blog?

herrootsrundeep — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 10:58:52 +0000

I just read a blog about how much time blogging takes up in our day! Should I blog or not? Only when there’s something really important to write about? But, then, people say “You haven’t written a blog in a while!”. I know you don’t want to get off their radar screen, but are we providing too much information for people to blog though, I mean slog through?? I don’t want to be contributing to the reason people aren’t getting outside! Nor to the reason they’re not exercising, lol!

So, should we blog just to get our name out there, or only blog with mind-shattering ideas? I read a lot of blogs that start with “I don’t know what to write about, I have to chain myself to the desk to write this”, so then I stop reading!

Well, you’ll have to post a comment–do you blog? It seems that everyone blogs! So, should some of us actually read and let the others blog? It’s hard to keep up with everyone’s blogs, that’s why I don’t have the time to blog–I’m READING! Anyway, let me know, facebook me too. I actually am diligent on FB, because it’s quicker!

Peace & Limitless Grace!

The 100-mile menu!

herrootsrundeep — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:39:28 +0000

I thought “I’ll only pick one food per meal that comes from farther away than 100 miles”–I picked “coffee” for Breakfast, but then lo and behold, my oats come from farther than 100 miles. Okay, and bananas, I need bananas for potassium. I eat my own fruit for summer breakfasts.

Lunch: avocados, beans, rice! yikes!

Dinner would be easy in the summer, but in the winter: sweet potato

Garlic: local; potatoes: local; everything else: from my farm!

The Socratic Paradox

herrootsrundeep — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 21:01:54 +0000

There are alot of famous stories about Socrates, but here’s a very appropriate one for 2011:

A wise person travelled to the Oracle at Delphi to ask who was the wisest person in Athens.

“Socrates, of course.”

Of course Socrates refused to believe this, because the result of all his philosophical inquiry had pointed out his own ignorance. Socrates then proceeded to speak with the brightest people in Athens to point out how ignorant he really was, and made a startling discovery by accident:

Although the people he met with were all very intelligent, none of them were fully aware of that which they didn’t yet know– as demonstrated by a willingness to speak decisively about topics which they possessed no real knowledge of.

Thus, Socrates was, in fact, the wisest person in Athens, not because of his great intelligence, but because he was actually aware of his ignorance.

This artificial sense of confidence is what closes people off to the vast sea of knowledge that is available.

“ME”–are the initials for Mother Earth!

herrootsrundeep — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 11:55:08 +0000

From the NYTimes: “Water with high amounts of radioactive iodine has been leaking directly into the Pacific Ocean from a large crack discovered Saturday in a six-foot-deep pit next to the seawater intake pipes at the No. 2 reactor.

After an unsuccessful attempt to flood the pit with concrete to stop the leak, workers on Sunday turned to trying to plug the apparent source of the water — an underground shaft thought to lead to the damaged reactor building — with more than 120 pounds of sawdust, three garbage bags full of shredded newspaper and about nine pounds of a polymeric powder that officials said absorbed 50 times its volume of water.” Wait a minute! They’re playing around the health of THE EARTH with sawdust & garbage bags of shredded newspaper??? Did they NOT see the power of WATER with the TSUNAMI??? Do they need ME to go over there and save the Earth?? After all, “ME” is Mother Earth!

When I taught private exercise classes in Stonington, I used to try to “educate”. Then, when I was hit by a sailboat on the Mystic River in my rowing shell, I decided the water was TOO BUSY, so left Stonington altogether to go farming. Now, up here, I decided “educating” is too hard, I’ll just “Build Awareness”. But, I thought I could “save the Earth”. Now, I “real-eyes” all I can do is “Save my own little piece of it”.

Barn Lessons!

herrootsrundeep — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 05:00:02 +0000

I mean “Born learning lessons”!

When asked to do something, do it! It’s so much easier haying than going to the beach, because at the end of the day you have so much more than sand in your shoes, you have a barn full of FOOD. Besides you sleep better at night when you haven’t slept all day!

When someone asks you to clear the table, I mean CLEAR A FIELD, just DO IT! It’s so much easier picking rocks than loading the dishwasher!

When your mother has first on the list “Carry out 200 bales of hay”, do it, or otherwise your personal trainer will be asking you to push tractor tires around INSIDE a building.

When your sister’s still watching Roadrunner, and it’s time to feed the calves, feed them, because when the calves grow up, they won’t kick YOU while you’re milking them.

When your father asks you to cut a field of corn with a corn knife because all the corn is laying on the ground from a hurricane, do it, because when you grow up and have a corn maze, everyone will be amazed at how perfect your paths are.

When everyone asks you, “omg, how do you do all this?” –just say “It was easy. I kept bee-zy.”

The Harmonica Man

herrootsrundeep — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 23:19:51 +0000

Wow, what a special man and a special person, and a special gift!

via The Harmonica Man.