Farming isn’t for everyone. When we got started, our naïve can-do attitude thought of Nature as being far more idyllic than it was, and we imagined that coworkers would be far more collaborative than it turns out they really were. Death is a daily fact on the farm. It’s not for everyone to stare death in the face. You can’t push it out of your mind, because it is the basis of your livelihood. Even a human family, while circumscribed by daily dangers, tends to strive to forget the reality of death. You can’t do that if you farm, and you can barely do that if you tend a garden.
Death is what facilitates new life. It is not a mistake. As the Quran says, “Everything is perishing except for His face,” or as the Buddha says, “Everything is fire.” The world of perpetual change (samsara) is the basis of our suffering, not because change or death is the problem but rather because our attachment to transient things is the problem. The phenomenal world is characterized by dualities of good and bad, life and death, black and white, us versus them, and none of these persist more than a moment. The idea of “dark” persists — the idea of “death” persists — but so too does the idea of life. The word maya is a cognate with the word magic. The three Magi who visited the Christ are relatives of this term in more ways than one. Maya does not mean illusion but rather the divine manifesting powers of Divinity. Maya is only a delusion when we believe it is the only and final reality, and there the delusion belongs to us, not to maya.
What is the purpose of a mortal life? What is the purpose of a universe that will end? It is so that the Absolute has a mirror to witness Itself. The world is God’s mirror, so that he can see his own face. We are, so to speak, mere neurons in the mind of God. When we attempt to live of a life of “me” separate from the Divine contextual whole, that is a misfiring neuron — or, worse, the logic of cancerous growth.
The farm should be a place that fosters the capacity for ever-more reflection of the Divine Image in human form. There is no calling more sacred than supplying the material and spiritual basis for the renewal of the Earth, because the Earth is the singular platform for the human experience, and our singular purpose is to attain immortality by becoming the Self-Consciousness of Divinity. How could we ever be forgotten if we become conscious participants of that eternal field of awareness? This is why we farm, this is why we live.
The farm as an organism has a lifespan and, eventually, it too will perish. But, like the meadow that blossoms again in spring, the farm principle will itself reincarnate once more. Everything we learn in a life carries over. No experience is lost even when the outer form is shed.