“I’m looking for kids who don’t want to be told what to do all day.” That line, heartfelt, brought more surprised grins than I could count, from both parents and potential campers alike. We are so structured today, so driven from doing to doing, that we have no room to remember how to ‘be’.
Farm Camp is about being. The campers will choose their activities. While we’ll have plenty of things we can do if we want to (make a fire, build a fort, dip candles, muck in the wetland), there is barely anything we’ll have to do. There are a few things we will try to be, such as: safe, healthy, and kind and we might have a rule that fun is required, but even the rules are up to the group. Most of all, these three weeks are about letting out a big sigh of relief, relaxing into long summer days and finding our heart songs.
Today was a mixed emotion day for me as there was a good bit of “doing” to get ready for this ‘being”. It felt a bit ironic. But, now at home the February fire blazes, the children roll and laugh on the couch, the animals are fed, the chickens on their roosts, and the darkness brings a calm to the homestead.
For a few moments, I panicked. What if they are expecting “Old MacDonald’s Farm”? Is what we have enough? Are the chickens, ducks, dogs, cat, guinea pigs, sheep and maybe even rabbits …enough? Just asking the question made me laugh. My inner Mother gave me a hug: ‘It’s plenty my dear. More than plenty.’
As I walked in from feeding the animals, the red sun setting, I heard the imagined laughter of a small group of children as they completed their teepee fort with the tarps I’d tossed out that morning, the twine they’d scrounged from the bales in the small building we call the barn, and the tall branches they’d dragged out of the woods to construct it, as a team, all afternoon. I sighed in relief, “It’s going to be great.”
Thanks Kateri for the photos.
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