week 14: the meaning of life
this week on the little dream farm
My good friend and neighbor had a hysterectomy last week, so this week when I checked in on her I asked her if she was feeling up for a nice slow walk outside with her incredibly sweet pup Teddy while the sun was warmly shining. She’s been walking with me for my own recovery for my back, so I thought we could recover together.
As we slowly hobbled along—she’d prefer I use the word saunter—we were talking about pilgrimages and long treks and journeys of discovering yourself. You know, easy breezy light stuff. 😉
I joked that when she and I were both feeling better, we should head out on a pilgrimage of our own…maybe discover the meaning of life, or something.
She laughed and said, “Oh! But I already know the meaning of life!”
“YOU DO?!” I replied in giggling curiosity.
So, friends, here you have it…the meaning of life according to my dear sweet sauntering neighbor friend.
She says…the meaning of life is CONNECTION.
Connection to the earth.
Connection to plants and animals and people.
Connection to ourselves.
Connection to making a meaningful impact right where you are.
That everything is connected…and that the point of it all is its connectedness.
If we could simply determine the meaning of life during a few turtle-paced laps up and back our country road…imagine what we might come up with on a 96-mile journey like the West Highland Way in Scotland or like the 500-mile trek that is the Camino de Santiago through Spain, France, and Portugal!
Last year I had an opportunity to attend a writer’s retreat on the Camino de Santiago that involved your own solo pilgrimage and staying at a retreat center with the other writers and seekers. I ended up not being able to make it work to go because of the work that I was doing at the time of the retreat.
Who knows. Maybe one day.
But I like her meaning-of-life description, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
You have to know, this friend of mine has the most brilliant and bright personality. She grew up here. In fact, her parents house—the house she grew up in—is just down the street from her current home.
The very first time we went on a walk together she took me through pastures, across fields, through the woods, and around a big pond. With Teddy in tow, we were helping her dad move his flock of sheep from one pasture to another. While on our walk, she’d stop every now and then, find something, and say with cheer, “Oooh! A delight!”
This “delight” was anything from a pretty bush, to the blue in the sky, to the wild raspberries she found on the side of the trail and stopped to pick and pop in her mouth.
I asked her where she came up with this adorable framing for looking so lovingly at the world and its little wonders. She told me that after she’d heard a story on the radio about Ross Gay and The Book of Delights, that she started noticing more tiny delights and calling them out out loud by saying, “Oooh! A delight!”
Truly, she’s just delightful.
So as I was thinking about connection this weekend, I finally took the leap on something I’d been tossing around in my head for a few weeks now.
My back is doing relatively great and I think I’m healing as well as I can be. But, I know that I absolutely cannot do the dahlia patch or cut flower patch again this year like I have the past two years.
My dilemma as of late was figuring out what to do with all the thousands of tubers that I’ve got in storage.
In order to make it happen, what I really need help with is all the manual labor that goes into setting it all up and getting the tubers into the ground, and then tearing it all down at the end of the season.
Here’s what that initial work looks like in late May:
First my neighbor from up the road brings his tractor over and tills the donkey manure that he spread over the patch in the fall into the soil to create a fresh planting bed.
Then the rows get measured out and the landscape fabric gets laid down and landscape-stapled to the soil.
Then the t-posts get pounded into the ground to serve as supports for the twine that gets wrapped around them…this keeps the dahlias upright as they get to their full height.
Then the rows need to be dug to plant the tubers.
Then the tubers themselves all need to be unboxed and divided.
Then the tubers get planted.
Then the irrigation drip tape needs to be installed.
Then at the end of the year the process gets done in reverse order until everything is put away until the next growing season.
Last year, Chris and I did the everything but the dividing and planting together. He said that this year, I could just direct him and he could do all the work himself…but this is in addition to all the other manual tasks he does all year long. It’s really just a lot for one person to take on.
I wondered, if I asked a handful of people locally if they could help me with all the setup and planting of the patch, maybe in return for their manual labor I could teach them everything I know about growing flowers from doing it at scale the last two years?
It takes Chris and I several hours across several days to get this all done. But with a handful of people it could probably be just an hour or two of work, together.
In the spirit of connection, I took to our village’s Facebook page and put myself out there and asked for help, and in just one day there’s a huge handful of people—men, women, and their kids—who’ve signed up to grow alongside me and help me make the patch a reality this year…and to learn how to grow their own flowers, too.
Connection.
On two different days in May, I’ll have this wonderful group of growers here on the Little Dream Farm to do all the setting up and planting out of the 2025 Dahlia Patch.
Throughout the growing season, I’ll invite them back to take photos in the patch, to snip their own blooms, and to enjoy the beauty of what they helped create.
Then, in the fall, I’ll invite them back one last time to break it all down with me, pack up the dahlias, maybe do a little dahlia tuber sale, and put everything away for the winter.
I can’t wait to meet everyone, to host them here on the farm, to teach what I’ve had the privilege of learning about growing flowers these last few years, and to grow the dahlia patch as a community—community being something I feel deeply we need now more than ever.
Molly-Max and Dominic are in for such a treat—they absolutely love meeting new people, kids especially, and they’re going to totally soak up all the attention!
I already have the sense I’m going to continue to learn far more from 2025 than anything I’ll impart to this crew about what I know about flowers.
In the back of my mind is always this one recurring nudge: pay attention to what the Little Dream Farm is trying to tell you.
As always, I’ll bring you along and will happily share in what I discover, and all the lessons.
If you happen to be local or semi-local to Washington County, New York and would like to join us, simply shoot me an email to bergsteinsarah@gmail.com and I’ll add you to the list to keep you in the loop.
I think that about does it for this week’s dispatch from here on the farm. After all, we did just tackle the meaning of life in about 1,500 words.
I’m off to tinker around with what I’m going to cook and bake and make for this gardening crew while I daydream about how wonderfully exciting it’ll be to have a group of growers growing together here on the LDF.
Can’t you just picture it?! Oooh! A delight!
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I'm overjoyed to report that as of this morning...16 people have signed up to help plant the 2025 Dahlia Patch. HOW AMAZING!!! 😭
Sarah, I’ve always thought you were wise beyond your years, and I mean that as a true compliment. I’ve read every single one of your farm notes and never felt the need to comment but this one really got me. It’s so great and perfect. I wish I could come and help but I live just outside Toronto and with all the unsettling things going on right now in North America, it’s probably best not to cross our border for a little bit. I really hope this situation calms down soon so I could come and help in the fall 🤞🏻🤞🏻.