We will have horses!

April 9th, 2009

Again the warning of rain gave way to a warm but overcast spring day. Taking advantage of not being inundated I grabbed my trusty chain saw early in the morning and went “lumbering” as so many generations of my father’s people had done in Canada. Although it’s fair to say that I would only be cutting down teensy weensy scrubby trees rather than the behemoths that used to fill the forests of Quebec and northern Ontario. Still it seems I have the genetic predisposition to the work and as a side benefit it always stirs a hearty appetite.

Part way through the morning Christian arrived with his friend Nicola. It seems they had another mutual friend who was looking for a bit of pasture for their horses. “Would it be ok to pasture the horses in this section of land below the farm? We’ll help you clean it all up ?” Of course I said “It would be fine but please leave some saddles too so I can ride when I’m here.”

“Wow!”, I thought, this is great. Not only do I get help cleaning it up but I get some horses to look out at and feed some apples too. Shortly afterwards a crew of six or seven people showed up, all smiling French men and women, some youths, who I took to be their children, and so began in earnest the process of cleaning out the bramble, the incipient softwood trees, and the myriad of rusty old bed frames that had accumulated at the bottom of the hill. Who knows how they got there but we pulled and tugged and twisted about fifteen of them from the overgrowth, which with the help of so many people was receding quickly.

To my great joy we found four old olive trees, or at least we found young olive trees growing around where four ancient trees had apparently stood. They had been overwhelmed by the insidious overgrowth including thorny blackberry canes at least twenty feet long and almost an inch thick. I carefully sent a few hours removing the overburden and releasing the olives to the light of day. And then I pruned them back severely. It will take some years to reshape them but the farm has its own olive trees now and perhaps in a year or two we might make some of or own olive oil.

At the end of the day Iris conducted a video interview with me as something that would be an additional piece of info for the business school case she is writing. Such questions as “why are you doing this?”, “What do you think it means for the local people?” , “Who are the other stakeholders and how do they benefit?”, took me back to my own business school days. I would not have imagined this future then even though now I can say with certainty that I can hardly imagine any other reality that would be as worthwhile to live.

Some wine, cheese and bread (the real three pillars of French civilization rather than “Liberté, fraternité, égalité”) as the sun set, with a fire roaring in the fire pit, the evening was calm and tranquil and beautiful. A day of work is the kind of progress I understand in unequivocal terms. The stock market may advance or it may decline, science may discover new truths or they may be stymied, the home team may win the big game or it may lose…these things all affect us in ways that makes us feel better or worse but they are essentially outside of us. What is inside of us is what we do with our time, what we make of our space and how we live our lives. We seek comfort in all things, in the shape and form of the physical world we inhabit, in the scents and sights and sounds we encounter, in the security of building for a future. Our every choice is a choice favoring more comfort over less by whatever fulcrum operates in our subconscious. This is why I do as I do, because I can.