Woman Closest to the Soil

Hmm....that's the way I was introduced to a potential job candidate today.  I couldn't help myself;  I glanced at my fingernails, just to check there wasn't a pound of garden under there.  (They were clean, thank you.) 

In a similar ah-ha moment about me and my life, I checked my Diigo profile and found that I have bookmarked an eclectic mix of articles as evidenced by my tags: sustainability, reading, local, food, bias, Hawaii, transcendentalism, technology, education, pearltree, canning, agricultural, broody, hen, poetry, writing, research.  I wondered what the thousands of people enrolled in the same MOOC I am starting next week would think of my profile should they stumble across it.  The MOOC is taking place on Google +, Facebook, Twitter, Diigo, Pearltree, and various other platforms and, as I said, there are thousands of other participants, so I doubt many will stumble across me, but I am sure I rank up there with the most mixed-up life. 

It's an odd thing to be so immersed in technology at school, so involved with the kids and their learning and the amazing products being produced from that learning, and then to come home to a place where I am trying to learn how to do things in the most basic way possible - to learn how to garden without chemicals, to be involved in the raising of animals, birth, death, and all the in between, to produce my own food from as close to scratch as I can.  To learn things I think that maybe my grandmothers were pretty happy to leave behind, in a lot of ways. 

Sometimes it feels like a good thing to be able to switch roles like that - when I am at work, I am really at work.  I focus very hard on what I need to get done and, especially, on the kids.  I work through lunch, lots of times, because I know that papers, even if they should come home with me, aren't going to be looked at unless it is an emergency.  When I am at home, I am really at home.  I focus on the things that need to get done there - baking for the week, the animal care, the greenhouse and the garden and, definitely not least though last, my family.  Since I spend more waking hours at school, I feel less behind there, more accomplished, but I love being home, too.  I just wish I could get that lovely accomplished feeling around the farm, too, instead of always feeling like there is so much more I could do.