Excerpt No. 0006
The Vineyard Doesn't Care Who You Are
I've spent most of my life trying to understand a piece of land.
Some years I thought I had it figured out.
The vineyard always had another lesson waiting for me.
That's one of the reasons I love farming.
The vineyard doesn't care who you are.
It doesn't care if you're rich.
It doesn't care if you're broke.
It doesn't care how many bottles you sold last year.
It doesn't care how many followers you have.
It doesn't care how long your résumé is.
Every spring it asks exactly the same question.
"Did you pay attention?"
The vineyard doesn't hand out participation trophies.
It doesn't care what your intentions were.
It responds only to what you actually did.
Or what you failed to do.
You can't negotiate with frost.
You can't argue with drought.
You can't convince a vine to produce because you worked hard yesterday.
Nature isn't unfair.
She's consistent.
Brutally consistent.
I've had seasons when I thought I had everything under control.
Then a heat wave reminded me I didn't.
I've had years when I wondered if I belonged out here at all.
The vineyard had something to teach me then, too.
That's the gift of farming.
It has a way of removing your ego before it removes your crop.
People ask me how I've managed to stay in farming all these years.
The answer isn't because I avoided failure.
It's because I finally stopped arguing with it.
Failure is expensive.
But so is tuition.
One teaches you exactly what the other does.
The only difference is whether you're willing to learn.
This Almanac isn't a collection of all the things I got right.
It's a record of the lessons I paid for.
Some with sweat.
Some with sleep.
Some with money.
Some with pride.
The expensive lessons deserve to be shared.
Otherwise someone else has to pay for them all over again.
The longer I farm, the more I realize the vineyard isn't trying to embarrass me.
It's trying to refine me.
Every difficult season strips away something unnecessary.
Overconfidence.
Impatience.
Control.
What's left is usually a better farmer.
Hopefully a better husband.
A better father.
A better friend.
Maybe even a better man.
Life works the same way.
Families don't grow because everything goes according to plan.
Businesses aren't built without setbacks.
Faith isn't strengthened when every prayer is answered exactly the way we wanted.
Growth almost always comes wrapped inside something we'd rather avoid.
The vineyard taught me that long before I recognized it anywhere else.
So if these pages ever sound certain, remember this.
They're not written by someone who conquered farming.
They're written by someone who's been corrected by it.
Again.
And again.
And again.
I'm grateful for every correction.
Because every one of them made me a little less convinced of myself...
...and a little more convinced that the vineyard always knows first.
Filed Away
The vineyard doesn't care who you are.
It only responds to how well you've listened.
Keith Saarloos
Farmer
Saarloos & Sons
