Scott Nearing in his later years.
When he was 95 years old Scott Nearing, who has been described as the great-granddaddy of the back-to-the land movement, was speaking to a group about homesteading and gardening. Of all that he said that day the most profound statement was this:
“If you want to garden just do it.”
Just think about this for a minute, if you want to do it, just do it. And this was years before that big sport shoe company turned just do it into a commercial slogan. How many of us have thought of something that we wanted to do and thought of all the reasons not to do it so we didn’t. While there are things that Scott Nearing said and wrote that I really do not believe or accept, the simplicity of most of it, if nothing else, makes you think.
All of us have dreams of how we want to live, but be truthful are you living the life you want to live? This is not intended to be another discussion about finding our inner self or anything of the sort. The question is if you want to do something why not do it?
I have learned long ago that the want to is so much more important than the how to. My Daddy said to my brothers and me over and over again, “Do something even if it’s wrong.” His belief was that if you did it wrong you could figure a way to fix it. He believed that it wasn’t a mistake until there was no way to correct it. But on the other hand he insisted that we do it right, if you are building nothing more than an outhouse build it square. I will grant you that sometimes it seems that our mistakes are beyond repair but this is rarely so.
Nelson Rockefeller was quoted as saying, “I am not interested in what I can’t do, I want to know how I can do what I want to do.” On Pasture is just one of places to find the how to, but you need to find the want to yourself. Sitting around worrying about what you don’t have won’t accomplish anything. Learning to use what you do have is a start.
The grass is forgiving. It is not required that the poly-wire fences be straight and if you have built the paddocks too large or too small just move a wire. But you can bet your sweet ass nothing will get done sitting and thinking about it. This is not to say that are not things that we need to know to make a grazing operation successful, but it’s kind of like getting married. If we wait until we can afford to, we probably never would.
Don’t worry about making mistakes. You are going to make them. I have heard it said that worrying is like rocking. It gives you something to do but it don’t get you very far. One more quote and then I’m going to hush. This is from Mark Twain. The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks and then starting on the first one. I have found this to be true. The first piece of poly-wire that you run is the most important one. After you have divided the pasture with that first wire the difference will amaze you and if you are like we were you can’t wait to do more and more and as you do more and more you will learn more and more.
As Scott Nearing and the sport shoe commercial said, Just do it!
