Life On Bramblewood Farm
Gathering In
There is a stillness that comes with autumn. This is my first as a farmer, and I feel it more keenly than ever. The rush of summer, with the daily urgency of feeding, fixing, tending, and moving, gives way to something slower and more deliberate.
The animals seem to know this.
The pigs spend more time in their huts together, buried in straw. The hens roam less and roost earlier; even the turkeys, despite their curiosity, take a few extra seconds to stir from their tightly meshed roosts when I approach, reluctant to disturb the calm and comfort of their huddle.
For me, this first autumn brings a quiet reckoning for lessons that only reveal themselves once their impact has been felt. A feeder design that didn’t quite work and wasted nearly a tonne of feed; a paddock rotation arranged for convenience that led to illness and losses; and trying to move too fast, threatening to outrun my own headlights. After our third farm tour this weekend, where I shared some of these failures with visitors, I found myself reflecting on how often we carry the weight of failure without considering its purpose. We think endlessly of what we should have done and how we might have prevented it, and in doing so, we often berate ourselves far more harshly than we ever would another.
But something changes when you share those failures with others. When you show your anxiety, regret, and vulnerability. It could be with a neighbour, a friend, or thirty perfect strangers on a farm tour, but when you do, you realise how universal our uncertainties are, how human it is to err. Everyone has their own inner struggle, their own quiet fear of not quite measuring up. And when those moments of honesty are met not with criticism but with understanding or even a simple nod or smile of recognition, something inside softens. In that moment, I watched those thirty strangers become sympathetic friends, and I saw the flicker of a small, unexpected community.
Ours is an individualist culture, and it places each of our tiny selves at the centre of a very large universe, where we must fight to hold our space and see the world through a lens of ‘me’. It’s a heavy burden, and life can quickly feel lonely and overwhelming. I take comfort in knowing that there are more organisms living in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are human beings on the planet. It reminds me that we’re just a small part of an infinitely complex pattern of life, utterly dependent on countless organisms we’ll never see. The air we breathe depends on plants that turn sunlight into oxygen, and about a kilogram of our own body weight belongs to the microbes that digest our food and regulate our mood.
When you think of it that way, it’s not such a leap to accept that we are also interdependent on one another. When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, our families and communities help to carry the burden of our imperfections and steady us, just as we do for them, in a common recognition that we’re all just learning as we go.
So perhaps the season is inviting us to slow down a little, to forgive ourselves more readily, and to reach out to others and help them to do the same. Not through grand gestures, but in small ways: a few minutes for a conversation instead of rushing past, a meal prepared with love and care, a moment of patience and understanding instead of advice or judgement. Because in the end, we need one another.
The animals know this.
I see the pigs snuggling together more tightly and the birds roosting closer and longer, not just for warmth, but for the comfort in a dark night shared with a trusted companion. Renewal always begins in the quiet places, long before the first green shoots or the growth we all crave. It starts with us letting go of what needs to be shed and allowing ourselves to find comfort in sharing our imperfect selves with others. And then, beneath the frost, in the darkness of the soil, away from the glare of the world and all the demands that brings, our roots can rest, and gather their strength for the spring to come.
Nick
