Bramblings: Contingency plans

By BECKY NELSON
By Becky Nelson

As I write, I am looking at a pre-Labor Day forecast of pretty nice weather.

Before we get there, we are slated to get some rain from the remnants of Hurricane Ida, a Category 4 storm when it made landfall in Louisiana and devastated parts of the deep south. That the hurricane made landfall on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a sad coincidence and maybe a dinging clarion bell about the future.

For years, experts have predicted disruptions to our normal weather patterns in the form of severe storms and severe droughts, both of which are plaguing our nation. Here in our little corner of the Northeast, the irregular summer has been a bear to work with. The unpredictability of the weather resulted in a mediocre maple sugar season, an unusually dry and droughty planting season and a soggy, wet and miserable growing and harvest season. Year to date, we have made barely a quarter of the hay we traditionally make on the farm because of frequent rain. We only need a stretch of three days of sunny weather to make hay, but the last time we made any was in late June. We are having more frequent chats about plans for the “what if” of making no more hay this year, and it is disheartening. Time for contingency plans.

Everyone with a backyard animal farm or a horse or two had best be making contingency plans should your regular neighborhood hay producer not be able to come through with the hay needed. The cost of a bale of hay will most assuredly be higher than last year, both because of the increase in cost for labor and supplies and also because of the weather. Availability will also be a factor, and contingency plans will be needed. We seem to have gotten a little complacent about the availability of everything we want whenever we want, and a contingency plan for all the “big things” in our lives is in order.

I was picking beans the other day, sorting through the mold on the plants to find good beans, lamenting the rain and gloom. As I picked, the first fall gaggle of Canadian geese of the season went honking in formation above me, and I began thinking about fall. I thought not only about my fondness for the season, crisp with traditionally dry, bright days, but also about the changing of the leaves and the wind-down of summer production. The barnyard philosopher in me started thinking about my own life and the inevitable wind-down of production and ability to perform at my peak. Having tumbled over the hill a good while back, I am looking forward to enjoying the autumn of my personal life, and am making contingency plans just in case things don’t go as planned.

Like the foliage, I plan to go out with a splash of color, and am nowhere near ready to trade in my tractor seat for a rocking chair. But I am ready to start enjoying life more than working my life away. We have planned a couple of two and three and four day getaways so that the chores at the farm cannot tempt us into working instead of relaxing and playing. I hope to take the rapid race from autumn to winter in my personal life with a bunch of wanders away from the track if all goes as planned.

If the pandemic has taught us as a people and a community and a nation and a world nothing else, it has taught us just what is important in life and also that we had better make contingency plans. What’s important isn’t another three hours spent at the office, or another hour at the computer screen. It IS the people around us, the community we live in, the family and friends, the feelings of love and compassion and empathy that make our life worth living. And it has also taught us that not all goes according to plan, and we had better be ready to make some decisions on the fly and be ready when plans change.

The pandemic has taught me it’s okay to take a break and wander away from the plan now and again. It’s okay to shut down your business for a day or a week or a month to give employees and yourselves a break. It’s okay to take your own needs into consideration before the wants of your customers or clients. It’s okay to have to wait for a package or a product. It’s okay to have to wait for a non-emergency doctor visit. It’s okay not to work yourself to the bone and let the true meaning of life slip away from you, whether you are in the springtime, summer, autumn or winter of your life. It’s okay to enjoy life while you are living. And it’s okay to make a contingency plan in case things don’t quite go the way we want.

Becky Nelson is co-owner of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, New Hampshire. You may reach her at [email protected].