A Chainsaw and Unseen Limits
Since moving to our small farm in 2019, life has been about trying something new, discovering the love of having trees for neighbors, and an endless stream of challenges pushing us beyond our comfort zone. Recently, we faced a challenge after a particularly strong storm that produced a tornado in Maury County, toppled a couple of tree’s along our driveway.
I picked an especially hot and humid day, temperatures close to 100 F, to clean up the mess.
There I was, garbed up in a long-sleeve cotton shirt, heavy work pants, composite toe work boots, a hard hat, heavy gloves, and protective chainsaw chaps. I fired up the chainsaw and began to cut the trees up.
About five minutes into the effort, I was sweating profusely, breathing hard, and clamoring around the fallen tree when I noticed something was off. With each branch I removed, the muscles in my arms, back and chest started giving out.
I was in trouble.
A Wake-Up Call
I’m pretty certain I was experiencing heat exhaustion, but after a couple of trips inside to cool off and hydrate, I was finally able to complete the job.
Afterward, I was confronted with an unsettling truth. My physical fitness had severely diminished from years of sitting behind a computer screen and not exercising regularly. Up until this point, I naively thought that stacking a few hay bales and handling fifty-pound feedbags once a month was enough of a work out regiment.
The Foundations of Change
That evening, recounting the day with Charlotte with growing alarm, we remembered a conversation from earlier in the month with her son about the Tonal Gym, a sleek home gym fully equipped with the equipment and virtual trainers to help you in your fitness journey.
Without hesitation, we ordered one. It was time for radical change.
But, we weren’t done. Feeling invigorated by our decision to invest in the Tonal Gym, we turned our sights to diet and sleep. I’m sporting one of the better “dad bods” out there. You know, the stereotypical suburban man of a nuclear family who is lean in the chest and thighs but looks like he could give birth at any moment.
Yeah, that’s me.
Obviously, if you are going to commit to working out, you have to change your eating habits also. So there we were, staring at another uncomfortable truth that it is time to make lasting changes in our diet.
And because anything meaningful has to come in threes, we had to become honest about our sleep hygiene and the adverse affect it was having on our health. A full nights sleep between either of us is as allusive as sightings of Bigfoot.
What is the culprit of so much of our weariness due to poor sleep habits? If you guessed the small screen, our phones, the little digital devices always eager to interject blue light into your retinas to guarantee hours of wakefulness, you’d be right.
A quick glance at the screen time statistics on my phone confirm the hypothesis, that way too much screen time was destroying our sleeping habits.
The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell, in his book titled “The Tipping Point”, describes a tipping point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point” of a sudden change that triggers an epidemic that is characterized by contagiousness, having little cause resulting in a big effect, and change that happens in a dramatic moment.
The clearing of the two trees is our tipping point for what we hope will become an epidemic where fitness is central in our lives, fueling our bodies with healthy eating, prioritizing sleep to reset our bodies, and embracing a holistic approach to life devoid of life’s detractors that steal your time.
The Road to Lasting Change
With this new found resolve, we have created a roadmap to a better life on the farm by:
Investing in Fitness: We are committing to working out regularly with our Tonal Gym
Cultivating Healthier Food Choices: We live on 20 acres, and we haven’t made it a priority to grow our own food. Until now, that is. We’ll be experimenting with microgreens, aeroponics gardening, and building out a garden to fill our table with wholesome food, and to sell produce through a roadside stand starting next summer.
Prioritizing Sleep: We’ll be mindful of the usage of the small screen and making sure to put limits in it’s use. This, plus a routine of going to bed at a reasonable hour and waking up at the same time, regardless of the day will become the new norm for us.
Embracing a Holistic Approach: Through regular exercise, nutritious eating, improved sleep habits, we are aiming to rejuvenate ourselves both physically and mentally, This isn’t just a change in our goals for the farm—it’s a fundamental transformation in how we live.
The last few months have forced uncomfortable truths upon us. And what is interesting is that at first, the trees that symbolized my physical limits, now have reveal greater truths about our lives. These truths have shaped a plan for change that we will bring about within ourselves and our small farm in middle Tennessee that will be shared through our social media accounts.
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