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I really like this post, Five Lessons Harvested at Green Gulch Farm by Natascha Bruckner. It’s been about a year and a half since my own short stay at Green Gulch, and I think about it often. There’s a lot of overlap between that way of life and the way of life we encountered in permaculture class.

There is a struggle within myself between wanting to be independent and the satisfaction of working on life within a community the way Bruckner describes:

Diligently scraping the soil between baby lettuces and kales, I looked up from my little plot and saw 35 bodies bent over the earth like I was, quietly laboring. I felt a rush of emotion—pride? love? the joy of a shared purpose? I understood Thich Nhat Hanh’s instruction to ‘go as a sangha.’ Work shared is not only work halved. Work shared lets us feel our separate bodies moving as one organism; it shows us we are interdependent, each a small but needed part of the whole.

Privacy and quiet time alone has always been a deep need for me, and I know they always will. But I’m learning to dig deeper about such notions, and often they expose an undercurrent of belief that’s holding me back. Is part of my reluctance to work in a group setting based on the idea of competition, and the belief that I have to outperform and outwork everyone else or I’m worthless? Why wouldn’t I be reluctant about that? It’s an impossible task! I recognize the same silent critic and dishwasher in myself that Bruckner describes. And it is such an utter relief to begin releasing those mind trips, and let them travel on without me.

Read Five Lessons Harvested at Green Gulch Farm by Natascha Bruckner.