The Time It Takes: What Farming Is Teaching Me

So I've been sitting with this podcast for a few days now.

It's called "Everything Has Its Timing" by Chen Li — and honestly, I didn't expect it to hit the way it did. It wasn't loud or dramatic. It just… settled in. The kind of thing that quietly rearranges how you see things.

And this morning, standing on my farm, I kept coming back to one story from it.

An old man planting oak trees. He knows — knows — he'll never sit in their shade. And he plants anyway. Because someone once did the same for him. I couldn't stop thinking about that.

When I first started farming, I treated it like a project.

Inputs. Outputs. Yield. Returns. What do I put in, what do I get back, and how fast?

That mindset didn't last long.

Because farming genuinely does not care about your urgency. It doesn't respond to pressure. It doesn't reward you for being impatient. It just takes the time it takes. Full stop.

Some of my trees have started fruiting now. Some haven't. And there is absolutely nothing I can do to speed up the ones that aren't ready. I used to find that frustrating — like I was falling behind somehow. Like something was going wrong.

Now? I'm starting to see it differently. That waiting is the process.

The line from the podcast that really got me was this idea that time isn't something to fight — it's something to work with.

And farming makes that impossible to ignore. You can prepare the soil. You can water. You can protect the plant. But you cannot pull it into growing. You just can't. And I've been noticing — that's pretty much true for life too.

Because I'm not just a farmer. Not even close.

I live in the city. I visit my farm once a week. I'm a mum to a 10-year-old. I work part-time from home. Most days, I'm juggling two completely different lives — and honestly, some days it feels like neither is moving.

Not the farm. Not life. Just… stillness.

Those days are hard. The kind where you sit and genuinely wonder if anything is actually happening, or if you're just spinning your wheels.

But something shifted for me today.

I started thinking about what's happening underground.

On the farm, I've watched this literally. There are long stretches with no visible growth — no new leaves, no fruit, nothing to show. But the roots are spreading. The soil is doing its thing. Systems are quietly stabilising. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't working. And I wonder how often that's true in life too.

I came across something a while back — from a business coach named Myron Golden — and it's been sitting in my head ever since:

Every deed is a seed. Every word is a seed. Every thought is a seed. Every dollar, every effort, every small decision — a seed I'm planting into whatever comes next.

And seeds don't sprout overnight. That's just not how seeds work.

That idea has genuinely changed how I farm. I stopped obsessing over what I could sell. I started focusing on feeding my own family first — growing what we actually eat, building something consistent, becoming a little less dependent on systems outside my control. Whatever comes beyond that is a bonus.

When you start thinking in seasons instead of weeks, everything shifts.

Farming has slowed me down. But not in that soft, aesthetic way people romanticise. It's slower in a more uncomfortable, real way — where you genuinely don't control the timeline. Where showing up is required, but results aren't guaranteed on your schedule.

Which, when I say it out loud, sounds a lot like parenting. And probably like most things worth doing.

I think what I'm learning — slowly, messily — is this:

There's a real difference between what's in my control and what isn't. I can choose what to plant. I can choose how I show up. I cannot choose when things unfold. And fighting that doesn't speed anything up. It just exhausts you.

So I'm trying to do my part. Show up. Plant. Tend to things. And then let time do its part.

I'm growing with this farm — not ahead of it, not behind it. With it.

I don't know what it'll look like a few years from now. But I know that if I keep showing up, something will grow. That part I'm sure of.

And if you've been feeling lately like you're falling behind, or nothing is moving, or you should be further along by now —

Maybe nothing is wrong.

Maybe it's just taking the time it takes.

If you're into growing your own food, living a little closer to nature, and figuring out this slower pace of things — I'd love to stay connected.