Harrowsmith – June 2019

Harrowsmith Summer 2019 | 45

ENVIRONMENT: EMBRACING FAILURE ON THE HOMESTEAD

planning our garden more than
actually gardening, as evidenced by
goldenrod, crabgrass and burdock
swaying elegantly in our vegetable
plot. And this in spite of a
meticulously planned, ambitious
seven-year vegetable-crop rotation
design plan artistically drawn in
our farm book. The greenhouse
turned into Chateau Oiseau (the
“birdhouse”) because we hadn’t
installed proper water lines and
the ground was so hard and barren,
the only things that liked being in
there were weeds and chickens.
Our livestock guardian puppy grew
into a handsome and enthusiastic
chicken killer, his modus operandi
being death by loving licks. We’d
occasionally find a dead chicken
in the pasture...soaked in puppy
slobber. And the 1,500 tree whips
we planted—good luck finding
them among four-foot-high grasses
and weeds.

We were failures. We felt like

losers, like posers, like idiots. We

had tried and mostly failed. The

evidence of it was all around us

every day and it was debilitating

for a long time. We did not meet our

own expectations and it sucked our

energy dry. But slowly we started

to cast the burden of failure off

our shoulders.

It started with an awareness

that this constant shame and

burden of our past mistakes was

holding us back from moving

forward on the farm. We began to

deliberately give ourselves grace

for our errors. Should we have had

a weed management plan prior to

planting 1,500 trees? Yes. Should

we have developed a water capture

system to provide water for our

garden and greenhouse because of

our shallow, hand-dug well? Yes.

Did we bite off more than we could

chew? Absolutely. But these were

good lessons, and a new lens to view

failure began to come into focus.

The old cliché that “failure breeds

success” started to take on personal

meaning for us. Through this lens we

could lift the burden of failure and

replace it with new-found freedom

and grace. We were learning to

homestead—learning brand new

skills, and learning them through the

crucible of trial and error.

There’s a beautiful quote by

Teddy Roosevelt, who wasn’t

thinking about small-scale farming

when he wrote it, that spoke to our

hesitant hearts: “The credit belongs

to the man who is actually in the

arena, whose face is marred by dust

and sweat and blood; who strives

valiantly; who errs, who comes short

again and again, because there is no

effort without error and shortcoming;

but who does actually strive to do the

deeds; who knows great enthusiasms,

the great devotions; who spends

Before and after. Left: Vegetation grows beside the barn where the future greenhouse will go. Above: Homeowner Ken
Dam on the Bobcat on the cleared greenhouse site.