My house is  a wreck, my email box is flooded, my to-do list is out of control, my feet are tired….It must be August…And  You’re listening to Episode 30 of The Hearth of Sap Bush Hollow: The Choice.

“Have we become prisoners of the life we dreaded?  Or have we chosen this?”  Bob doesn’t have an answer for me.  We’re headed out to one of the holding ponds, our morning coffee in our backpack.  We’re puzzling through the day ahead of us as the sun breaks through the forest.  We have to clean all the freezers so we can make room for this final batch of chickens.  There’s a bushel of tomatoes on the cooktop simmering into sauce that needs canning.  Bacon needs slicing and wrapping.  The chicken customers need to be notified to come pick up birds early.  A text from Dave at The Mouzon House in Saratoga came in.  He needs another delivery of meat.  Barbers needs an egg delivery.  I still haven’t updated the inventory from last week’s chicken harvest.  The items on today’s to-do list are already impossible, and day is only breaking.

We’ve officially lost Kate as our herd manager, which means we’ve also lost our official days off. Rest days are staggered; all three kids get Sundays to themselves, and then Saoirse and Ula get Mondays, Corey gets Fridays and Bob and I get…well, none.  

When the kids were little, we worked hard all week, then came home from the farmers’ market Saturday afternoon and sipped martinis and roasted a chicken.  When the cafe started, the routine continued, until we added nights.  But then Sundays became spectacular:  long walks, morning perusals of the newspaper while eating pancakes, followed by a nap.  With the afternoon came the much-needed house-cleaning, a time I used to restore my spirit and find my center.  And then, to celebrate renewed balance, the day culminated in Sunday dinner with Mom and Dad.  

And now that’s gone, too.  Bob and I spend Sundays down at the farm.  With Kate gone, many parts of this job are new all over again.  I want to withdraw, plan exactly how to execute each maneuver, and then step forward to manage this business with precision and calm.  But no sooner do I make a plan than something else drops onto my plate that I forgot or didn’t see before.  

And it’s August, for crying out loud:  the height of canning, freezing, feed bills, and chaos.   And mouths to feed.  There are always always mouths to feed.  Staying ahead of the hunger of three teenagers who are on their feet all day hoisting buckets, hauling water and moving boxes is a marathon unto itself.

I was hopeful when Bob and I chose this life that we could outsmart the non-stop work.  I was determined that there could be a day of rest in each week to restore body, mind, spirit and home.  Non-stop work has driven many farm descendants off the land and into 40-hour jobs.  I wanted to prove that it didn’t have to be this way.

 But the only way to keep up right now, this year, is to keep going, pushing the unfinished work off to the next day, and the next, and the next, until Sunday comes and Sunday goes, and no day of reflection and celebration has punctuated the week and prepared our spirits to embrace another Monday.  I want to coax order from this mess, but I’m re-learning my job once again, and I have to float on the sea of chaos until I can identify a way to create organization.  The only option for this day is to keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.

We make it to the end of the day, and the meats are miraculously re-boxed and sorted, and we all drive out to the back pasture to load up the final batch of chickens.  We’ve decided to end the poultry season early, hoping to reduce farm demands for September so that the kids can focus on school.   We form a parade as we head out back: Dad on the tractor, Ula on a mountain bike, Corey in the Mule with his feed buckets, Mom and me in the pick-up truck, Bob with a car to contain dogs.  We shuttle the chickens together, then load them into boxes, and the boxes onto the tractor.  Between loads I slip over to rest my aching feet and perch on the field stones in the hedgerow and listen to the crickets, focusing on their pulsating chirps.  

They remind me that, even in this chaos, there is always rhythm and season.  And in rhythm and season I find faith:  faith that the tomato sauce will make its way into jars, that there will be room enough in the freezers, that the bacon will get sliced, that the meals will get cooked, and that the day will come before long when I can wake from a long nap, file away the mail, wipe the dust from my furniture, wash down my counters and relish the deep breath that comes when a home is once more calm.

But not today.  Once the chickens are boxed, Saoirse needs help finishing packing the orders.  By the time we make it home it is 8 pm.  As a family we work to clean the kitchen and make a hackneyed meal:  mashed potatoes, ground beef sautéed with summer squash, garlic and onions.  We push aside the mail, egg boxes, thermoses, yellowing cucumbers, face masks, ripening peaches, canning jars, water bottles and all other withering detritus until we find just enough space to set down our plates and eat.

We quietly shovel food into our mouths as we try to ignore the soreness in our bodies.  I hate to eat like this:  without ceremony, without placement, without presentation. 

And yet in this moment, I am grateful:  for the work that makes me fall into bed too tired to worry, for the food on my plate, for the people who share these labors, for the renewed faith that what must get done will get done, for the optimism that winter will come, and with it a long rest, a clean house, and a clear mind that lets us vision how we’re going to do this all better next year.

And I have the answer to my question that started the day.  

We’ve chosen this.  And we will chose it again, and again, and again.