Patience on the homestead is something I've spent more than a few hours contemplating. Nothing happens quickly out here on the farm. In a world where we want, and even demand, immediate gratification at every turn, rural life can deny it just as fast. Produce from the garden? It will be many weeks before you can taste first fruits. Even more if the ground lacks any and all nutrients as ours does.
Honeybees, while amazing to watch, take a very long time (by our 2015 standards) to produce the golden honey we love. One bee will spend its short lifetime of about 50 days producing 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey. God willing, it will be another year before we can harvest some for our use.
Nearly the same for our chickens laying eggs. The chicks we purchased in May won't begin laying eggs until September or October. My first breakfast of free-range pastured eggs cooked over medium are many months away. In the meantime, the chicks require near daily attention. Patience is simply mandated, for there is absolutely nothing I can do but wait. Patiently or impatiently. The choice is mine.
The woods on our property are in need of management and that definitely does not happen overnight. Of course forests have done fine on their own for all of history, but when your children are out amongst dead standing trees, well, they just need to be brought down and thinned out. More importantly, if you're hoping to build a deer and wild turkey population, some trees need to go and some need to grow.
And then there is firewood. We love heating with firewood - love everything about it. This too, is not a source of instant gratification. Cutting trees into lengths, splitting, stacking, drying, moving, etc. Much time and energy goes into building a fire and heating your house with wood. Henry Ford was absolutely right, "Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice."
The list could go on and on.
Perhaps my lack of patience is a direct reflection of growing up in an impatient world. Heck, I was a kid that grew up with that new fangled invention called the remote control. Think of it! I didn't even have to wait the time it takes to walk over to the TV to change the channel! Nor did I have to break a sweat doing it - almost no labor involved - but that is the subject of another post on another day.
What does it mean that more and more of us are growing up in a world where patience is really not needed or wanted? Maybe it's not even considered a virtue anymore.
I guess for my part I'm rather coming to enjoy waiting. Life on the homestead has been very good for me in this regard, and I suspect for our whole family. Even Isaac is learning it early, because the black snake eggs he found over a month ago are just now hatching. He has checked on them every day, and it was with real excitement that he told me they had started to hatch. What might this mean for his own sense of ease in life growing up, if he doesn't expect things to happen immediately?
I dare say that life on a homestead, even a very small one, might be a wonderful antidote for the many in our world who suffer the stress and frustration that come with the need for an increase in patience. It might prove the sort of thing many are in desperate need of for the good of their souls.
"But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." Romans 8:25
"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up." Galatians 6:9
"...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." Galatians 5: 22, 23
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