Let Winter Be Winter

The mornings are slow to lighten. The grass slows. Trees stand bare against grey skies. The ground is heavier underfoot, and evenings draw us indoors earlier.

Across many dairy farms, cows are dry and calf sheds are empty between seasons. Elsewhere, there are wintering animals arriving, stock to feed and mud to manage. But winter carries a different rhythm.

The natural world does not apologise for this. It contracts and gathers itself before the next burst of growth. Paddocks are not embarrassed by reduced output. Trees do not try to hold their leaves through winter to prove a point. A dairy cow is dried off so she can reset before another season begins.

Nature understands that there are seasons for output and seasons for replenishment. We are not always as good at granting ourselves the same permission. Only humans would look at a season designed for restoration and wonder how to make it more productive

Perhaps winter is not a problem to overcome, but a rhythm we are meant to follow.

I have been reading Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks, named for the confronting idea that an average human life contains only about four thousand weeks. At first, it sounds like a call to arms. Time is limited. Fit more in.

There is truth in that. There are seasons when we need to push. Proverbial hay must be made while the sun shines. Some things matter enough to require effort and a willingness to keep going. Four Thousand Weeks offers a deeper and more truthful statement. We will never complete everything on our to-do list.

Imagine a farmer in 1750. Their life was not easy, and there is no need to romanticise it. But time was experienced differently. Work followed daylight, weather, animals and the task at hand. You milked until the milking was finished. You cut hay when conditions were right. You chopped enough wood before dark.

There was no illusion that the list would one day be complete. A person moved with the season rather than treating every hour as a container to fill.

Modern rural life still follows those rhythms, but we also live with smartphones, emails, deadlines, compliance calendars and electric light, allowing us to push days beyond their natural edges. The message is relentless. Do more. Answer faster. Optimise everything.

Even rest can become another task. Walk briskly, track your steps and heartrate. Listen to something useful. There is nothing wrong with active relaxation, but sometimes we need something slower.

A fire. A book. A cup of tea going cold beside us. A meal that takes time. A conversation that meanders. An early night. An afternoon with nothing to show for it. Rest in all its delicious ordinariness. The old-fashioned luxury of doing nothing and the discipline to do so. Everything that winter in all its slower hibernation and replenishment era invites us to do.

A life of four thousand weeks is too short to drift through without intention, but it is also too short to spend permanently rushing, physically present and mentally elsewhere.

Perhaps the wisdom is in knowing the season we are in and giving ourselves permission to live accordingly.

Winter is an invitation to soften. To let shorter days be shorter days.  Spring will come. The grass will lift its head, the days will lengthen and the next rush of life will arrive soon enough.

For now, perhaps we can enjoy winter slowly. To follow the light and to let winter be winter in our lives.

LeAnne Blakelock is a Taranaki based dairy farmer and accountant, and founder of the social media platform, the Calf Chronicles.