Pondering the passage of years

I have pushed past the 60 year mark but until recently, really never gave it much thought. We are participating in a mentorship program for marketing the pork we raise and one of the assignments was to determine where one wants their farm to be in 5, 10, 20 years.

Now, my mother had a wonderful attitude about aging. She used to say that age was just a number, and that it’s more about how you FEEL than what the calendar says. On the other hand, she used to drive me CRAZY when she’s say things like “If I were 20 years younger, I would do this or that.” My standard reply was always “Why can’t you do it now?”

I finally realized my childhood dream of having a farm when we moved to our little 2.5 acre piece of Heaven when I was 55 years old. Better late than never, right? It wasn’t the huge farm of my youthful dreams, but for the place in life we were at (needing to be within commuting distance of work in a major metropolitan area) it was what we could afford. And I was over the moon happy.

Our advancing age really isn’t front-of-mind for me, but this little exercise of where we see our farm in the future has been occupying the back of my mind for weeks. Twenty years ago (oh, the irony), we’d be approaching this exercise with the knowledge that we’d be hitting retirement age at that time, and I imagine we’d say that we’d step back farm activities so we could pursue retirement interests like travel. Today, I look forward 20 years and think that I’m not sure I want to, or maybe CAN’T, farm anymore.

But then the though struck me; NO ONE knows the future. We’ve had friends and acquaintances who passed away way too young, in their 20’s and 30’s. My mother lived to age 94 and lived independently in the house where I grew up until the end. I don’t plan on fighting aging, but we are doing what we can to be as healthy as we can so we can enjoy life. Really, I think that should be EVERYONE’S goal though, just my personal opinion.

So, our dream is in 20 years that we have a larger farm where we can diversify and create great sustainable systems in such a way that we can do some traveling. You know, have our cake and eat it too. I don’t want to live my life without having long term dreams and goals. If something comes up in the future that interferes with that, we’ll deal with it then. But like Mom said, age is just a number. It shouldn’t define who you are or what you can and can’t do.

Thanks Mom. Hope you and Dad are resting in peace.