Happy Valentine's & New Year 2022!

February 11, 2022
Owl Feather Farm, San Juan Island

Discipline vs. Indulgence

The year’s first two months bring quite a contrast, it seems. We start with stringent resolutions: No sugar. Dry January. Five hundred situps. Drink more water. Most people abandon all this before the month is done, and here comes love. Hearts and flowers and primrose lane with cherries on top. Kisses and caresses. Candy and champagne. How sweet it is! Never mind those stupid situps.

What a life we 21st-century moderns lead, veering from continence to comfort in mere weeks. But we did not invent this, and some of history’s smartest people have pondered the dichotomy between discipline and devotion. “Love is a better teacher than duty,” said Albert Einstein. Pretty smart guy, but let’s think a minute about the real nature of each.

Isn’t “duty”—that is, responsibility and reliability—a key facet of love? And isn’t “love”—that is, faith and affection—the cornerstone of any enterprise we aspire to make?

Pink Rose in Garden

Love...

At Owl Feather Farm this year’s flowers are starting to take shape now: tulips poking above the ground, hardy seeds sprouting, roots spreading below ground. It’s the start of the farm work season—turning the earth, ordering seeds, spreading fertilizer, which is the manure we have faithfully shoveled from our barn stalls. In other words, work yields flowers, flowers make work, and the two comprise an equation of love and discipline.

We try to avoid resolutions here at Owl Feather Farm. Well, I do. My husband Eric’s resolution this year is to drink more water. What is the problem with men and water, anyway? I better go remind Eric of his resolution. A little nudge never hurts, and that’s the nature of healing. Despite the grandiose trajectory of modern medicine, there are no magic bullets. Just daily steps in love and duty.

-Eric Lucas

Gardening in the winter, Loves work

... And love's work.

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