The change in weather this week has brought about a noticeable change in me. I hadn’t realised quite how tense I had felt from the incessant dry spell we have had. The crops, our first ever, now stand a chance of reaching maturity and thus, harvest. The grass should now be able to grow enough to be turned into hay later in the summer, providing vital food for horses and cattle this winter. I feel noticeably more relaxed as a result and have been able to turn my attention back to letting go (see last week’s blog). I realise that it is much harder to let yourself go and into the ‘void’ if there is latent tension about one’s environment; it just doesn’t feel safe enough to do so.

3 weeks’ ago we got 5 ducklings to keep the older 2 ducks company. Today, helped by the feeling of being more relaxed, I let them go – from the safe, enclosed pen and into the wider garden. They’re now cautiously roaming around with the 8 hens, 2 other ducks (far separate, unimpressed of having enforced companions) and at least 10 wild mallards who have moved into the pig’s woodland and wander in and out of the garden as they desire. Far more entertaining than any TV documentary is the new ducklings’ behaviour: reactions, exploring, hiding, looking out for danger and general interaction with their environment. My favourite was watching their heads tilting sideways in unison to observe a red kite overhead, taking a moment to assess whether they needed to hide, and then deciding to run to hide under a tree. They then went to sleep for the next 20 minutes to recover!

This expansion of the ducklings’ world, I realise, is another act of letting go: allowing others to go out and explore the world for themselves. To learn, grow, gain confidence, have that confidence knocked, to rebound, recover, try again, move on, explore something new… repeat. We are in fact all doing this all the time, mostly without realising it. The knock backs and learnings are inevitable and, I realise, are the only way to grow. As a parent then, it is our job to stand back and let go of our children, for they are not ours at all, they are their own; they are simply loaned to us for a short period of time for us to guide them to find their own path in the world.

Practising these micro lessons of letting go with the farm animals gives me a better chance of letting my children go as they get older and need to spread their own wings. In small ways at first, then ultimately, to fly the nest and not to feel tethered to where they started. The ultimate goal has to be to let them go and trust that their inner wisdom and guidance will take their soul to wherever it needs to go, to do whatever it is they need to learn in this lifetime and to grow into the piece of the whole that they are destined to become. Knowing that their growth will come mostly from the knock backs and ‘wrong’ turns, is something that we cannot control. I realise as I write that the illusion of being in control is exactly that: an illusion. True learning is the opposite of being in control: it is to let go.

I am filled with gratitude that life on a farm gives rise to multiple opportunities to learn how to let go and this perpetual student has the privilege of regular practise. I may even end up good at it… but I am not there yet.