THE WAY OUT THERE

A year to follow through

BY HUNTER HILL
Posted 1/4/23

Who likes New Year’s resolutions? I think we all like the idea of fixing small areas of our life, so we can be a better version of ourselves, perhaps with the exception of those who are already perfect and need not improve. 

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THE WAY OUT THERE

A year to follow through

Posted

Who likes New Year’s resolutions? I think we all like the idea of fixing small areas of our life, so we can be a better version of ourselves, perhaps with the exception of those who are already perfect and need not improve. 

For the rest of us, however, the new year is a perfect time to set goals and look to the future as an opportunity for growth and betterment. 

My wife and I picked a single one to focus on together this year. Just do it. 

As farmers, it’s easy to have a bunch of ideas and literally get lost in the rabbit hole of thought, considering the endless possibilities of not only what to do but how to do it. We’ve talked about growing so many things and building one thing or another to suit our needs. But all too often, we write our thoughts out and just keep discussing and planning, wanting to take action only when we feel perfectly prepared. 

If we’ve learned anything in the past year, even given everything we accomplished, is that if a plan never makes it past thinking and into doing, it just wasted your time. As George Canning said, “Indecision and delays are the parents of failure.”

When I was in high school—and even college—I recall hearing coaches and teachers alike state the same idea in a different way: “You can never be static; you are either learning and moving forward, or forgetting and falling behind.”

With the nation taking turns as it has been, my wife and I feel pressure like never before to take care of our sons before the opportunities of the day pass us by. 

Another way to consider the same idea is the reality that we are not guaranteed tomorrow. I’m content to spend my last day working, but I think I would be less comforted knowing I spent my last days thinking of a future I never even started.

As a father, I have to always think of the example I set for my boys. I want my sons to be strong young men one day, and to be able to make decisions to further their lives and be leaders for change. I certainly can’t expect this of them and sit on my hands when it comes to the future I’m leaving them.

 On a lighter note, I’m excited by what this means for our farm and for my readers. I’m looking at the year ahead with an appetite for success, whether that success means learning a lesson through the consequences of taking deliberate action—and possibly failing—or from reaching the goals I set out to achieve. 

Both are only possible by taking action. 

I use the word “appetite” because so much of what we do revolves around food, where our food comes from and how it is made. If all goes well, we will have an impressive variety of new produce at our veggie stand this summer. And if not, I’ll have enough good stories about how things went terribly wrong to write some juicy columns for you folks. 

The way out here it’s do or die. Not every situation is explicitly life or death, but every move feeds the future. While it may be tempting to live on cruise control sometimes, the reality is that every day, farmers have to wake up hungry and ready to go on the attack to accomplish the minimum. They press forward into the unknown just to stay in the game. 

You can use the same thinking for new year’s resolutions. Want to lose weight? The options are all around you; pick one and get after it. Want to save money? Take action, save, work hard and execute. 

I suppose I’ll have to take a note from Nike, because 2023 for our family will be underscored by their very simple slogan: Just do it.

new year, 2023, farming

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