Excerpt No. 0010

Whoo... Whoo... Double Digits.

Well...

Look at that.

Ten.

If you're reading this, we've officially made it to double digits.

I know.

It doesn't exactly qualify us for literary greatness.

The Library of Congress hasn't called.

Nobody's writing college papers about The Saarloos Almanac.

And I haven't been invited to sit between Oprah and Hemingway.

But every old book that mattered once had ten pages.

Then twenty.

Then one hundred.

The difference wasn't talent.

The difference was somebody kept writing.

People often ask me how you build a vineyard.

The answer disappoints them.

One vine.

One post.

One wire.

One row.

Then you come back tomorrow and do it again.

Building this Almanac feels a lot like farming.

Nobody celebrates the tenth vine you planted.

Nobody throws a parade because you finished another row.

But someday someone drives by and says,

"That's a beautiful vineyard."

They never see the thousands of ordinary days that built it.

Life has taught me something.

Most things worth keeping don't arrive all at once.

Trust.

Respect.

Friendship.

A good marriage.

A healthy vineyard.

A strong business.

A family.

None of them happen overnight.

They're built quietly, usually when nobody's watching.

That's probably why I enjoy farming so much.

The vineyard doesn't reward excitement.

It rewards consistency.

It doesn't ask me to be brilliant.

It asks me to show up.

Again.

Tomorrow.

And the day after that.

Funny enough...

The same seems to be true for raising kids.

Running a business.

Keeping promises.

And now...

Writing a book.

I don't know how many pages this Almanac will eventually hold.

Maybe a hundred.

Maybe a thousand.

Maybe one day my kids will add pages I never imagined.

Maybe my grandchildren will laugh at something I wrote here.

I hope they do.

Because if they're reading it, that means the conversation continued.

That's all I could ever ask for.

So here's to page ten.

Not because ten is a big number.

Because ten means we didn't stop at one.

And if experience has taught me anything...

It's that the people who keep showing up usually end up seeing things the quitters never do.

Tomorrow...

We'll write page eleven.

Filed Away

Great things aren't built in giant leaps.

They're built by showing up one more time than everyone else.

Keith Saarloos
Farmer
Saarloos & Sons