December 3, 2008 – Cold, clear. I’ve had friends two ways – chemical and hard work. Some friendships simply happen, an almost biological connection that works. I’ve had some friendships I’ve hard to work hard to make and keep. Lately, I’ve been taking care to mind my friendships, pay attention to them, value them. I sometimes surprise my friends by telling them they are important to me, and I appreciate them.
  My friendships are closely tied into my life on this farm. I think the farm meant one thing when I got it, and another after a couple of years. I remember that first year when life here was simpler, and I got to know and grasp every part of it.
 In some ways, I think the purpose and spirit of the farm got away from me. Too much going on, too many chores, lots of pictures and bloggings, more animals than I could really get to know, and not enough time to know my friends, and to really get to know and trust them. I am changing that. It was a good step to give two of my donkeys away to Ken Norman, the farrier, and I would like to simplify life on the farm, return to the more simple, spiritual impulses that brought me here and shaped my life here.
  I am also, of course, affected by the traumas swirling in the outside world, people afraid for their security and losing their jobs and savings. I want the farm to be secure, well-managed and efficient. So I am working on that. These pressures have brought me closer to my friends, heightened their meaning to me, and the idea of community. It is true, if a hoary cliche, that light follows shadow, and that bad things lead to good things often, and I can already see that. People who don’t usually talk about these things are talking about values, and about wanting lives that are not so closely tied to money and hedge funds. People whose work has slowed or stopped are changing their lives, trying new things, talking about simpler and more spiritual lives.
  Nobody lives in a bubble, or should, and so I am rethinking the farm, and my own growth and life here. Friendship is a boundary, perhaps, that marks one time, then another.