“Quarries Farm is a place of healing. It has lifted me from the lowest mood, soothed anxious thoughts. Planting seeds, transplanting flowers, having soil trickling through my fingers; such simple acts help me through a troubled day , offer hope of growing, like the flowers. Even weeding is a reverent act, or shovelling compost into a wheelbarrow. I try to be the act, the moment.
The farm offers companionship, I have learnt from others, listened and been listened to. Working alongside colleagues, I am accepted, not judged. We share our burdens, or we keep our silence. Trust is a fragile plant, but here it thrives.
The farm revives jaded senses. I see more clearly, notice more: Herb Robert clustering by a woodland path, banks of bluebells; ferns gorse and grasses. All seen afresh.
I am startled by blackbirds trilling above me or the whirr and clack of wings as a partridge, equally startled , scurries up from a field. Or the screech of nesting swallows, flitting in and out of the barn. Leaf music on a breezy day.
Smells too. Wild garlic rubbed on my hands. A wild rose. Or pick elderflower, taste it in a cordial. Savour these transient pleasures.
The farm brings me closer to the changing seasons.
In the town we admit nature on sufferance, in the country, it suffers us to enter. I am more conscious of the waxing and waning of the year: flowers ripening, withering, trees dressed in leaves, trees naked: the warmth of life, the chill of death. And I accept that I must leave all this, one day, vanish like the bluebells, but never return. Life: once and once only, as Rilke wrote.
The farm is a tree-lover’s paradise. Sycamores, Ash, Hawthorn, Willows, like a fence to keep out pain.
Finally, the farm is Joan , Peter and Tina. They grow from this land as much as trees and plants. It is their gift to us. Cherish it.
Written by Peter Adair
