For I Have Learned

or will learn in this coming year, at least

Where Was I?

To pick up where I left off, the plan was to make 2026 about being much more analogue. Only that phrase seems to have floated to the top of a lot of pools recently, and also might start an international spelling incident, so instead: more ‘in real life’. #IRL

The other part of the plan was to start to treat this space much as I treated my blog, twenty years ago, popping up most days to update whoever was reading with the regular goings on around the farm, and the house. Not to overthink, though very possibly to overshare.

Immediately this plan took shape, events conspired (with my more than willing brain, for conspiracy, like the more commonly cited tango, takes [at least] two) to stop me from so much as typing a word for a good fortnight. This is the darkest time of the year, and like many, I struggle. I don’t sleep as well as I should, I’m not feeling great, and yet of course I’m piling things on the to-do list, all with a deadline of ‘Christmas’ or ‘Year End.’

So, while my yearning for ‘analogue days’ ( one of the designs for my abandoned permaculture diploma, the name pinched from the glorious Melanie Leavey ) is still a functional part of Plan 26 it has been somewhat overtaken by an even catchier headline.

To Learn To Be Content

Whatever the circumstances, in 2026 I will learn to be content. Content with myself, where I am, who I am, and what I have. Because, dear reader, it is not to be sneezed at. Harking back just a month or two, I was suddenly reminded that it could be said all the dreams had come true.

When it struck me that I was standing in the middle of my childhood dreams. OK, when I was eight I didn’t have any concept of land ownership, debt, or stress. I just wanted goats and sheep, ponies and chickens, and a big green space to play in. And now, over half a century later, I have all that, at my very fingertips, and somehow, I’m still dissatisfied. That’s insane.

I have lived forever reaching out, trying to achieve something else, never resting where I am. Some might call it ambition, but now, in the final quarter of my life, it feels a lot like restless discontent, and suddenly, the sands of time drain fast, and spending time in the cloudless bubble at the top of the timer, dreaming dreams of other possible lives feels terrifying and wasteful. How few grains are left to feel between my fingers, and record. Eternity is cloudless, and while my soul, a mere sojourner here, yearns for its expansive joy, my heart, earthbound as it is, desperately needs to experience the remainder of this beautiful, created, fallen, impossibly grainy and salty, earthly life.

And that’s a massively fancy way of saying, I intend to accept the house we live in, disregard its shortcomings and disappointments, and just live here. The blessing of the land we get to rent, which presents innumerable challenges because it lacks this and is situated thus, but it doesn’t matter. It is the land we have available, and for at least one whole year, it can be our fiefdom, and we the slightly deluded, happy, senseless vassals.

Hometown. Credit: Simon Folkard Photography

The Laminated Rules

I have yet to write the rules¹. I don’t know if there will be many.

So far, I have popped back to a post I wrote nearly three years ago entitled A Dozen Things I Want To Do which, misleadingly, contains only six of them, and discovered that I can tick off precisely zero. So I think I will review and reinstate my Want To-Do List, and settle it firmly in my current world.

I want to make our tiny home garden lovely, accept that the days of running a vibrant market garden are behind me (hurrah for having done it) and instead lavish what time and energy I can find on my ‘allotment garden’, feeding us and maybe others with beautiful, fresh food.

Importantly, I need to trust in God, and let things be. I need to steer clear of social media, and new plans to create an income. If I need extra income, it will show up. I shall just write here, and keep it bloggy. Not every piece will have a beginning, a middle and

Learning and Longing

I remember a long ago sermon (though sadly I can’t remember who gave it) which reminded us to hear the word ‘learned’ in Paul’s famous statement:

I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.²

Not merely, I am content, but I have learned to be content. I have learned the secret of being content. Like anything worth having, it’s taken an effort, and I’ve had to hand it over to a greater power than me.

I must learn to be content.

Between the Wars

I’m a great devotee of Nella Last’s wonderful Mass Observation Diaries from during and after World War Two, and am always struck by her agonised empathy with all the women around her who long for nothing more than peace, stability, a roof over their family’s head and the chance to just live. To go food shopping, pop to the library, knit a sweater, make a cake.

I was talking to Jo the other day, and I put it like this - ‘The every day, the quiet life, all that stuff every Ukrainian woman probably prays for every night. And for every woman in Gaza? Utterly unachievable, even if the war stopped tomorrow and reparations began the next day. Impossible, unimaginable.’ - and I’m going to have to ‘learn’ to be content?³

Let the Blogging Begin

So, with apologies to those of you who might get fed up with me (if indeed I actually get underway this time) I will sign off, hoping to do some warm up exercises during the rest of this month - perhaps I’ll hone the Want-To-Do-List? - and then, begin the New Year fulfilling my destiny as the First of the Library Book Substackers.

1. Family joke. Once the rules are laminated, that’s the final edit, OK?

2. Philippians 4:11-13

3. I appreciate that war affects everyone, not just women. But in Nella’s view, and inside my own old head, it is chiefly women who long the most for peace and simply living.