I love working. I love my work, which these days is writing and working with writers, and editing books to completion.
My other “work”, essential work for a writer, is walking and dreaming and looking at the world and everything in it to see what it has to tell me. Both of these kinds of work are intrinsically tied together and I can’t do one without the other.
I learned to work, and work hard, from my parents, who chose to take up farming and a self-sufficient life when they were in their early twenties, without realizing how hard it could often be.
I want to insert a note of caution here. People who aren’t farmers, (excluding the industrialized mechanized version of farming here) often say, “But it’s so much work.” But it’s far less work than spending 80 hours a week as a lawyer or a doctor, far less work than being stuck in a cubicle somewhere, and a whole lot more satisfying. But yes, the farm work is that and it has to be done exactly when it needs to be, so even if the mosquitoes are howling in grey clouds, you go do hay or pick fruit. Even if it is belting down snow and wind, you feed and care for your animals before you go in. Even if your back is bent like an old pretzel, you hoe up the corn and hill up the potatoes.
And for me, farm work was never hard work because I loved all of it. My favourite thing to do when I was a kid was prune the apple trees. Once I got all the suckers and crossed branches out of the way, I could almost feel our old apple trees sighing and stretching and breathing. Of course, they just grew it all back again.
But my father had two bad habits: he told us what to do but he never told us how, and no mater what we did or how hard we tried, it was never good enough. His biggest compliment to something we had done was to snort and walk away without criticism.
My mother worked incredibly hard, as well, from getting the creamers for the milk sterilized when my father came in at 6 a.m., to cooking three full meals a day, to canning food, gardening and teaching her children to love music. She had been an opera singer before she became a farmer and a farmer’s wife, and all of her children believe that she was one of the best cooks ever made.
My dad also taught his kids to work until the job was finished — after all, no point in leaving that last bunch of cherries on the top branch of the tree or those few ripe raspberries hidden in the branches.
So farm life and farm work taught me many things, one of which was to work hard and one of which is to keep going. Farm work also taught me to wait and it taught me timing. Can’t bring the hay in until it’s dry. Can’t milk the cow until it’s milking time. Can’t bake bread until it’s risen.
And so, when it came to writing, I brought those lessons, plus the same level of intention and care to that work although “work” in writing is not always clear cut. Someone asked me once how I knew when a book was done. No book is ever completely done, but as Oscar Wilde says, once you’re down to putting in commas and taking them back out, you are probably done.
The great thing about being a cultural worker is that you never have to retire. The arts will carry you through until the day you die. The great thing about writing and reading and editing is that when my heart decides we are staying in the comfy chair for a bit, I can just keep on working.
I think a lot of people who are not artists don’t quite realize that an artist, well, at least a writer, which is what I know about, is always working. When I am writing a new something, I have to park it in the back of my brain and feed it rainbows and sparkles until I can get back to it, no matter what else I am doing. Otherwise it will start to sulk and a sulky story is no fun to have around.
So, I do love working. The worst advice someone can give me is to “take it easy.” I don’t know how and I don’t want to learn. But I have had to learn to keep working within the boundaries that my body sets for me. I’m never going to make it to the top of a cherry tree again, but that keeps the robins and ravens happy. I really miss farm work but I am so glad to see all the young farmers in our valley growing great food for us all, and bringing up their children with strong values about work and care and community. I wish them nothing but the best and most of all, I wish them joy and strength in their fine work.
Luanne Armstrong is a longtime resident of Kootenay Lake’s East Shore.