This week marked four months since I started my new off-farm job. 40 hours a week, somewhere between 8am and 5pm Mondays-Fridays, I’ve been fully engaged in settling into my work as an Arts Learning Coordinator at the Ohio Arts Council. This has required me to take a big step back from farmwork overall and to develop a whole new relationship to time on the farm. In keeping with that theme, I’ll break my rule against apologizing for how long it’s been since I last posted to note I started writing this just before my three month anniversary. Feels good to finally get it finished.

Back in May, I revisited the concept of farming as a creative practice. Continuing with that thread, I’ve been thinking about the concept of farming as a 4D, or time-based, artform. Again, this isn’t a totally new idea for me. My friend and colleague from the University of Florida, printmaker Patrick Grigsby has been prompting me for many years with invitations to think with him around our overlapping “slow” art practices. With this post, I’ll start to unpack that a bit and record some more recent thoughts on my changing perception of time in relation to three concepts – clock time, perceptual time, and deep time.

I. Clock Time
There were semesters, even years, during my time as an adjunct professor when I worked the equivalent of a 40 hour week. But I mostly did that job in stints and at odd hours as needed and as it suited me – 4am-7am, noon-4pm, 8pm-midnight – based on my internal clock which sometimes decided 3am would be a fine time to start the day and between other joys and responsibilities including tending the farm. So working a (mostly) desk job in long stretches, M-F, week after week is a significant change. Overall I would say I’m adapting to working “bank hours” and abiding by clock time, better than I expected but it has changed things in my life overall, particularly as a part-time farmer.

Trying to keep things going, especially in the record-breaking hot dry summer we’re having, has meant occasionally getting out in the morning before I put on my clean work clothes, or working super extra carefully because I already have them on, and again after I take them off at night. But I’m not putting in anywhere near the hours I used to and it shows. (Note to self: You MUST get a new irrigation system next season and use it!)

I have really enjoyed the few brief times I’ve been on the farm before heading downtown for work. It sounds different – it’s quiet but for the birds singing, and you I actually hear them because there are no mowers, motorcycles, or sirens blaring. The air is fresh and relatively cool and the dose of natural light before a day in the office under fluorescents is better than any vitamin you can get at a store. Heading out after work gives me a moment to catch my breath, to step out from behind the screen and re-engage with the physical world through a deeply somatic experience. All of which leads me to the next shift I’m experiencing, a change in my psychological perception of time on the farm.

II. Perceptual Time
I’ve written many times before about experiencing a state of flow while farming – losing track of time as I bounce around the space from task to task. That is a precious experience I haven’t been able to enjoy as much as I would like these past few months because it requires BIG chunks of clock time. (Note to self: Add setting aside more weekend days for that to the wish list.) For now, I’m thinking about how the ways I perceive time impact my perception of myself and my life. How are we shaped and defined by the ways we fill time? How are we shaped by what we do with our few precious hours of free time? I want farming to remain part of my identity so I need to make time for it.

In the meantime, I find I’m moving my body in different ways, more slowly, when I do get out. I’m not feeling as hurried, even though I’m well aware I have less time. I’ve adopted a “what gets done will get done” attitude that’s really new for me. It’s probably in part just a natural part of the aging process. I’ll be 50 (fifty!) this spring which is not the age I feel most of the time. But I definitely don’t have quite as much energy as I used to. This has impacted the farm’s productivity, but I guess that’s not the point of the space at this moment. – I’m not getting as much done but I’m experiencing and enjoying it in new ways.

III. Deep Time
Which links directly to my last point. My loss of clock time for the farm has caused me to let nature lead the way more so than in the past. And nature works s-l-o-w-l-y. As deep ecologist Joanna Macy wrote in the poem, “From the Council for All Beings,”

I, lichen, work slowly, very slowly.
Time is my friend.
This is what I give you:
patience for the long haul and perseverance.

In some ways it has been interesting, even exciting, to move slowly, if not as slowly as lichen.

As my Instagram followers know, I love to celebrate volunteers (#volunteerplants) that pop out of the ground, and often thrive, of their own free will. The less time I am out pulling weeds, the better chance there is for these kinds of surprises. But my lack of attention to watering and pruning has also cost me in lost productivity and led to the establishment of some less welcome guest plants and pests. This is a good reminder that agri-culture isn’t natural, it depends on us.

The weather is also a reminder to think about the land over time. It was here before us and it will be here long after we’re gone. I worry constantly about the change in climate we are experiencing in my area code. The city of Columbus has been impacted by changing temperatures and a heat island effect caused by our lack of tree coverage. I watch the storms break up just before they reach us as if impacted by an invisible force field. The city’s Urban Forestry Master Plan is designed to address this, but trees need time to grow. Future efforts to push the city and our little farm into perma-culture practices will prove beneficial for the plants and us.

In this time of deep transition, as I travel in these new modes of time, I’ll try to be patient. It doesn’t come naturally for me. It takes intentionality – an essential ingredient in both good farming and good art.