No. 4 Growing it was The Easy Part

I learned a very expensive lesson trying to farm without a deer fence.

This spring, I planted everything I had been waiting all winter to grow: watermelon, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers. These were the crops that made the farm finally feel like a farm to me. After months of preparing, starting seeds, learning the land, amending the land and planning what the season could produce, things were finally in the ground and growing.

At the time, that was mostly what I was thinking about: How do I make sure this grows?

I was thinking about soil, water, sunlight, spacing, weeds, soil health and whether the plants were establishing themselves. I was watching for flowers and then fruit. I was paying attention to all the signs that told me the work was working.

What I wasn't thinking enough about was what would happen once the land started producing something worth coming for.

And apparently, everybody got the memo.

I started seeing insects I had never seen before. There were beetles, caterpillars and bugs I suddenly had to identify because they had discovered my plants before I had discovered them. Then there were the deer.

The farm sits on land that was already theirs long before I started growing food there, so their presence wasn't exactly surprising. The organization that manages the community farm had actually started constructing a large deer fence around the entire property. It just wasn't finished yet.

I knew that.

I also knew my plants were already in the ground.

Still, some part of me treated the larger fence as the solution. It was being handled. Eventually it would be finished, and in the meantime, I kept growing.

Growth Changes the Environment

Once the plants started producing, I wasn't just tending a garden anymore. I had created a food source.

Things wanted it.

The deer wanted it. The insects wanted it. I wanted it.

And that realization has stayed with me: I'm not the only one who wants what I have. I'm not the only one who wants what I'm growing.

At first, that sounds like a warning about people wanting to take something from you, but that not really what I mean.

The deer aren't plotting against me. They're hungry, and I put watermelon, tomatoes, squash and other food in a place where they already live. The insects aren't disrespecting all the work I put into my plants. They're responding to food and habitat.

I created something desirable. Of course something would desire it.

That distinction matters to me because I don't want protection to become synonymous with fear. I'm not interested in moving through life assuming that everyone wants to take something from me. What I'm beginning to understand is much simpler: anything valuable will naturally create demand for access to it.

Sometimes that access is harmful. Sometimes it's completely innocent. Sometimes the thing asking for access doesn't even understand what it costs you to provide it.

I saw that in the field. A deer doesn't have to understand that I've spent months nurturing a plant to consume it in a few minutes. It doesn't have to know how many hours I've spent there, how many times I've watered it, or what I planned to do with the harvest. It just sees food.

And that left me with a responsibility I hadn't thought enough about when I planted it.

My responsibility wasn't to just to grow something valuable, but to also decide how to protect something valuable.

I Thought My Job Was to Grow

The damage was frustrating, but what really got me was how much work it created after the fact.

I wasn't only tending plants anymore. I was rehabilitating plants I had already spent time nurturing, figuring out what could recover, replacing what couldn't, and trying to find temporary ways to protect what remained. Work I thought I had already done was showing back up on my to-do list in another form.

And I'm a problem solver, so I solved the problems. That's what I do.

If a plant was damaged, I figured out whether I could save it. If I couldn't, I found something else to put there. I kept moving because I knew the season wasn't over and I knew I could still grow food.

But eventually I had to admit that I was creating more work for myself by continuing to treat recovery as the solution.

The community fence still wasn't finished. I could be annoyed about that, but the deer didn't care whose responsibility the fence was supposed to be. My plants were growing now.

At some point, after telling myself that I should've known better, I decided I didn't have to wait. I could adjust.

So, I got to work.

And somewhere in that adjustment, this stopped being only a farming lesson and became a lesson from the field.

When Recovery Becomes Your Infrastructure

For a long time, I needed to learn that I was abundant. I didn't always know that.

Over time, though, I've watched things come into my life that I couldn't have forced if I tried. Money has come. Opportunities have appeared. Ideas have found me.

Relationships have changed me. Even the land itself came into my life as an opportunity I couldn't have manufactured on my own.

I've watched things fall apart and then watched myself build again. I've lost things I thought I needed and later discovered that there was still more available to me.

Those experiences changed the way I see abundance.

I stopped believing that every loss meant there would never be another opportunity. I stopped feeling like I had to grip everything that came to me because it might be my only chance. I learned that I can create, recreate, pivot, rebuild and begin again.

There is enormous freedom in knowing that.

I still believe it.

But the field is showing me the limitation of stopping the lesson there.

Because when you know you're good at recovering, recovery can become your infrastructure.

You start building your life around the assumption that you'll be able to fix whatever happens.

I'll make the money back.

I'll grow another plant.

I'll find another opportunity.

I'll figure something out.

And the tricky part is that sometimes you do. Sometimes you make the money back. Sometimes you find another plant. Sometimes another door opens before you've even finished grieving the one that closed.

Your resilience keeps proving itself, which makes it easy not to notice how often you're requiring yourself to use it.

That's the part I've been sitting with.

There is a difference between having the capacity to recover and having the infrastructure to sustain.

If I can grow another watermelon, that's abundance.

If I can protect the watermelon I already spent months growing, that's stewardship.

I need both.

Renewable Doesn't Mean Disposable

One of the greatest things I've learned about myself is that I trust my ability to create, and I trust life enough to know that one closed door isn't the end of possibility. But trusting that there will be more and valuing what you already have aren't mutually exclusive.

Maybe they're supposed to exist together.

This harvest won't be my last harvest, but this harvest still matters.

A cucumber plant can be replanted, but the one growing in front of me has already required months of time. There is water in it. There is soil in it. There are hours of labor in it. There is an entire season moving through that plant.

Could I grow another one? As long as there is enough time left in the season, of course.

But why should my ability to replace something make me careless with what I've already grown?

That question goes far beyond the farm for me.

There have been times in my life when I accessed abundance and because I didn't feel like I had to force it into existence, I took that as proof that abundance was renewable.

I still think it is.

What I'm questioning now is whether I sometimes confused renewable with replaceable. Those aren't the same thing.

Maybe the next stage of abundance isn't learning that more can come.

Maybe it's learning how to create stability around what has already arrived.

Protection Is Part of the Preparation

That's where the fence has started to mean something different to me.

The fence isn't there because the deer are bad. It's there because I know what I'm growing, and I've decided what gets access to it.

still share some of my harvest with them OUTSIDE of the fence, but to my point...

I'm starting to see boundaries the same way.

Someone doesn't have to be a bad person for me to decide how much access they should have to my time, energy or love. Someone can genuinely love me and still ask for more of me than I can sustainably give. Protecting a relationship can mean having the uncomfortable conversation instead of overlooking something because I'm focused on where I want the relationship to go.

The same is true in business. Getting paid isn't the whole goal. If the opportunity I've been asking for arrives, what will it require from my life? What systems need to exist so the business doesn't consume everything around it? Who do I have to become to maintain what I'm asking to receive?

Money needs infrastructure too. So does time. So does love. So does opportunity.

A savings account doesn't mean I don't believe more money will come. A contract doesn't mean I assume someone will take advantage of me. A boundary doesn't mean I believe everyone around me has bad intentions.

Sometimes protection is simply an acknowledgment of value.

I know what this took to grow, so I'm going to take care of it.

And that's the part of abundance I hadn't fully considered before.

We talk so much about becoming the person capable of attracting, creating or receiving what we want. We talk about believing we're worthy of more. Calling more in. Working toward more.

But what happens after it comes?

What does it require to hold it?

What does it require to protect it?

What happens when the life you've been asking for actually starts growing?

Learning How to Keep

I don't have the full answer yet and I think that's why this lesson feels important enough to write while I'm still in it.'

At the farm, the answer is becoming very practical. I'm not interested in putting more into the ground without thinking about the infrastructure that will support and protect it. I don't want to spend another season doing twice the work because I was so focused on producing that I didn't prepare for production.

In my life, the answer is less obvious.

There are boundaries in it, certainly. There are better systems, more discernment and probably a greater willingness to prepare for the reality of what I want instead of only imagining the moment I receive it.

But I think there's something internal happening too.

For years, the lesson was: You are abundant. There will be more. Trust that.

This season is adding: Yes, there will be more. But what you have now is worth protecting.

I don't want my ability to survive disruption to be the thing holding my life together.

I don't want recovery to be my infrastructure.

I've proven to myself that I can rebuild. I know how to start over. I know how to figure something out when the original plan falls apart.

Maybe I don't need to keep proving that.

The question I'm carrying out of the field now is different:

What does it look like to build a life that can hold what keeps finding me?

I don't know yet.

But maybe stability in abundance begins there: trusting that there will always be more while becoming a better steward of what is already here.

I know how to grow.

I know how to rebuild.

Now I'm learning how to keep.