Life on the Farm: Really Fast, But Still Slow

**How funny … on a day when I was talking about how really fast life on the farm is, but still slow I scheduled the wrong day to make this post! I actually wrote this Monday night and then scheduled it for what I thought was Tuesday … the 12th … I guess I’m just a day ahead this week. Anyways, sorry for the super late post.**

Now that we have owned the farm for over half-a-year, been building since the summer, and have now actually lived here for about three weeks I have an observation. Life on Stoneyfield Farm is plenty fast, but actually slow. By fast I mean that we seem to be doing a lot of stuff whether it is working on the house, working with the livestock, planning for what we are going to do next, cutting wood, or even catching up on church work. And by slow I just mean the general feeling of life. But, let me break it down a little more…

When we lived in town and my office/youth center was connected to our house it was pretty difficult to get that “separation” from work feeling. I would pop back and forth between work and home all throughout the day and even into the evening from time to time. It seemed like I could never get away (although it is hard to completely get away in ministry). Plus, there was just a general dissatisfaction rumbling around in my brain because of where we were living.

Don’t get me wrong we were blessed to live in the house and I really do believe that God set it all up because when we moved here we would have never been able to buy and build a farm and the church wasn’t really at a place to have the youth center at the church building itself. So, it was great for beginnings. The beginnings of our family in Knoxville and the beginnings of our youth ministry at NCC.

But, now that I am going on with my fifth year here and we are expanding our ministries at church it really did seem like it made sense to move the youth to the church and move the family to the country … we really wanted to be in the country, and God opened the doors in His timing.

Anyways, back to the fast but slow stuff. Our life is still plenty busy with church, youth group, activity day, school events, and now the added time of driving to town. But, even with everything that is going on it still seems like life has slowed down a little bit. I think it is because I (and we) can change gears from time to time which brings some refreshment back to my life.

I love the fact that I can put in a good days work at the church planning events, working on messages and studies, and meeting with students. But, after all of that is done I can come home and feed the pigs, cut firewood, or do any number of chores. Even the work on the farm is still work it is a change of pace and I think it helps keep me fresh on all fronts.

So, there is my simple observation … life on the farm is really fast, but still slow. Of course it probably helps that we haven’t hooked up the T.V. and the fact that we have slower internet keeps us off the computer a bit more.