This is a sharing of my story and thoughts on farming intuitively and relationally

It’s election day in Australia. I think of a conversation I had with a friend who is marking the ballot very differently to my preferences. I also think of how I have had more conversations about overwhelm and distress with the political and environmental chaos in the world, than about particular ideologies, parties or philosophies. In the conversation with my friend there was a moment where I felt a common ground, and it seemed ideologies were shed as our two streams became one river for a little while. The words were something like ‘It’s all a mess and perhaps as a collective we have already failed but the thing is though there has been so much loss we are not lost because we always can lean into the beautiful aspects of what it is to be human - empathy, sharing, deep connection, relationality, incredible perceptual capacities and imagination. The thing is as we question human survival it is these things that will pull us through these levels of chaos and trauma and even if we don’t survive ourselves then we have spent our time endeavouring to enjoy what so many of us long for - deepening our connection to our own nature, surrounding nature and our world.”

These things burrowed under the argument of political ideology. Spaciousness and an open awareness arrived in our conversation. Perhaps the silver lining of political mayhem, overwhelm and mistrust is to begin to remember ourselves and begin to remember the realms of our senses and imagination and find trust in the ways more known by our pre-industrial ancestors. The ways that invite our nostalgia, wonder and longing.

I ponder a lot about how I relate to my land and also the role of the human in the farming system, especially the interrelatedness between our inner and outer world. I feel called to express where I am at with it in hope to create community around the exploration and also inspire people to lean into their own sense of things through practicing observation and inner wisdom. I would call it intuition but that word means so many things in different ways to different people and can bring about reactions. I love how the word ‘intuition’ escapes the authority of definition. It is like a one size fits all spiritual garment that fits each person uniquely. So I’ll call it relational as it is through deep relationship and the magic between beings that intuition speaks. It feels more grounded too.

Relationality is what I want to write about and explore especially in the context of gardening, farming and any work with the land. Relationality could be a term for everything really but everything in the sense of the connection and felt space between things. The space from which creativity is ignited, The space that really humbles our notion of ownership and dissolves claiming originality to our name. Which vegetable claims the name for the minestrone?

Speaking of which this piece of writing might be minestrone like. A collection of recently harvested thoughts mixed into a pot with some carby substance and water and let to merge over a flame. I do feel the flame of my calling to cook this up and share it.

Grief

There is a grief that is cross cultural and cross borders. Why the colonisation and destruction of indigenous people the world over, including in the colonisers homelands occurred I can’t make sense. The importance of this loss and the darkness of this history is foremost. The ongoing acknowledgement and recognition of that as much as possible I nod emphatically to being the most important thing.

My colonised western reductionist causal based mind sometimes wants to put it down to one thing. The best I can think of is single sex boarding schools where children begin from a very young age socialising in a group of the same gender and age with authority figures who misuse power and rank and where children grow up spending little time in groups of mixed age and gender.

I’m not going to pretend I don’t have western colonial aspects to my psyche as that’s the soup I was cooked in but I do think it’s about time we all lean into our indigenous roots and review our historical record of which cultures have had the most environmental and social success in the world and learn from these elder cultures of the lands we live on.

A month or so ago I did an inner work in which I heard the word ‘Coloniser’ spoken as an accusation in my inner process. That was confronting and hard to hear. It is easier for me to identify with the parts of myself that are drawn to and are in deep love with nature and feel immense empathy and care. Of course it is confronting to recognise my colonial heritage and ancestry and that I perpetuate colonisation, as stuck in that as I may be. I am a land owner which means I currently stand in the role of coloniser though I feel deeply my connection to land and am a peaceful person. However the land I own and manage was taken from the indigenous people of my area. I am on Gumbaynggirr country. People who recognised they belong to the earth not the other way around. I acknowledge this land was stolen and that massive violence and trauma happened in this country. A big question that frequently comes to me is ‘How do we open up to feeling and connecting with land more without first coming to grief? Our own and collective?’

I am not an indigenous person to the country where I was born and what happened here is the most important. I am aware though that I belong to the earth as do all humans and I do feel the loss of connection to my indigenous ancestral knowledge and rage at the abusive relationship humanity has with the earth. I don’t know when my genetic heritage stopped being indigenous. We all have indigenous roots somewhere. European christian colonisers murdered, outlawed, brutalised and destroyed indigenous people, cultures, sacred places and environments of their own lands.

So I’ve found the answer to the question above about the grief piece is ‘I can’t’. Endeavouring to engage in and respond more deeply to nature in as much of it’s own terms as possible (myself as nature included) then there waiting at the first doorway is mourning and a stern message to wake up more.

Movement

So to turn this piece of writing to something lighter I really believe we are on this path as a collective. I had a recurring dream recently of a huge dingo mother carrying a pup gently by the scruff from somewhere to another place. I couldn’t see those places but sensed they are the urban mainstream human oriented world to a place of wild nature in which humans have a harmonious part. The dingo mother had a sense of patience - just carrying one at a time across to the other place with no rush. She was side on but the pup was facing me. It’s face was half human half dingo. A human face with a cute dingo nose and ears. The body was dingo. There were words above this dingo pup image which said ‘Dreaming Mother’.

This dream aligns with my reality in waking life as when I speak about this kind of thing many people respond in resonance and share this sentiment. This further sparks my calling to share and explore together relational ways of being with land.

To quote from Dr Patrick MacManaway “The most powerful tool we have in our psyche for dialogue with the spirit world is our imagination. We have long been led to mistrust and discard this precious part of ourselves. To reclaim the power of our direct, personal connection with spirit we need to reclaim the power of our exciting and imaginal reality”

I wholeheartedly believe these beautifully articulated words. I personally know the imaginal space can have real effects. I have experienced this in healing and decision making on my farm. My purpose as a farmer at the moment is to develop my practice of relational farming as well as deeper listening and communication.

I’m fascinated with the perceptual capacities we have as humans and how much of my deepest sense of learning comes from what arises in the relational space, through intentionally listening with an unknowing mind and also random events of intuitive communication.

I recognise that as a farmer I am in a role of creative leadership and it’s important to look at the nature and meaning of that responsibility. I talk of leadership in terms of not ‘the boss’ but rather the person who considers all the parts and acts on behalf with the best of their ability. Response - ability. It’s amazing as a human to be able to see ourselves as a species in the system (and as a creative leader) and also experientally feel that place.

I know these ideas are not new. It feels more so they have been patiently waiting to be remembered and known, underneath all the goings about of general life and our modern day culture. I felt that sense of patience in the dingo dream. I treasure the experiences of attunement, mine and also witnessing or hearing other people’s. They tend to be infused with love and help quench my longing to be in close relationship with nature and also to be close to the most beautiful aspects of the meaning of being human.

Lessons from the past

My learning around my approach becoming more intuitive also comes from looking back and reflecting on where I’ve been at in my inner world and my life during my 15 years with this land. I have been driven by my anger and sadness with the insanity and damaging practices of the industrial food system and my spirit of fight with that and the dominant supermarkets.

So I expressed this in my farming by following above and beyond the requirements set out in the organic farming standards. I had a hugely productive market garden, growing great quality produce of around 50 types of food crops. I did this as ethically and gently as I knew to at the time while balancing efficiency and productivity. The food market for vegetables is mainly annual plants which involves tilling and exposing soil and a lot of human effort. I succeeded in offering fresh organic vegetables to people and businesses at a price competitive with Woolworths and with the farmers time adequately valued (just). Wwoofers were essential to this endeavour. Most farmers I know work for extremely little pay per hour and burn out is a huge concern. I burnt out and I also couldn’t understand why some crops weren’t healthy and strong as they were. Soil organic matter was higher each year. The fertilisers I used were the same. I used practices that were better than the organic standards required. I needed a break and for family reasons I moved to town. I studied process oriented psychology to answer my inquiry as to what happens over slow repetitive tasks such as thinning carrots or planting seeds and such repetitive and we drop into deeper space with each other as this happened often on the farm and I realised I could up-skill. In one particularly pivotal moment someone told me a dream and I felt the energy of the dream but didn’t know how to work with it. I really felt that lack of knowledge and skill so kept my ear out for a solution, an intuitive process in itself. Process oriented psychology (process work) came my way and I knew this was the thing I was waiting for to focus on next. Process work has an articulation and structure that meets what I was looking for beautifully and efficiently in a way that feels poetic, creative and fluid while simultaneously grounded, scientific and structured. It recognises the individual not only in their own right but also as an interconnected part of the social or natural environment. It’s a perfect match for relating to my land more intuitively, structuring my experience through my senses and deepening relationality and also fine tuning my sense of purpose and fully gave me the knowledge I needed to work with dreams.

My production focused mindset was great at producing large amounts of quality food but it wasn’t sustainable even to the best organic and sustainable farming methods I knew to produce food on a commercial scale. It wasn’t permaculture because permaculture isn’t a commercial production focused practice and I needed something more efficient to give people an alternative to the big supermarkets.

I had studied permaculture as a teenager and felt my soul light up in recognition but I didn’t have the human hands to feed lot’s of people following strictly these principles. That would have been a community venture and there weren’t the people. I realised Woolworths sells convenience more than anything.

So I was being too demanding on myself and hence my land and we both needed a rest. I’ve learnt that I can’t impose a timeframe on relational farming. Things take the time they take and there are time spirits that have their own process at hand. They give me stepping stones as I go and I have to trust the process. I’ve always been good at planning and then being fluid in adapting or dropping the plan as needed but there is a much more vast background plan that I only partly determine that takes an awareness I was not holding before. I was pushing things before they were ready and imposing my own pace on the land. Besides, observational learning takes time and we come from a fast paced culture. The best things I’ve learnt are from conversations with other farmers, picking up titbits of local knowledge, experimenting and observation. My biggest mistakes have been not starting small and not experimenting before planting large amounts. I have learnt that being more relational means that things might not make sense at the time but with trust and accepting not knowing they do later. I learn this more and more and I listen more to the subtle messages from my psyche and dream life. That helps me treat myself more sustainably and allows me to keep being of service in a way that follows natural energy rather than tries to impose upon it. Inner stillness and having an unknowing mind is the nest of intuition. I don’t want to come across as considering myself achieved at this. I feel like a baby in it,  but I have enough of a grasp to feel the potential and luckily in my life have been dreamy enough to not pay too much attention to what is conventional, I’ve generally been able to be guided by what feels right and makes sense to me.

Looking ahead

Yet to write about my experiences and thoughts around creating community and working together, namely what are the challenges to that and exploring how that could be more successful. Most intentional communities fail before they have bought the land due to human dynamics. The transition to more collaborative and shared styles of living is a big dilemma. Legislation is limiting. We haven’t learnt this in our mainstream modern culture. I have lived on intentional community in which land ownership was not part of the model. I have run a community gardening group. Parts of both of those worked and didn’t work. I think about this topic a lot as so many challenges seem to funnel back to a lack of community.