Today I woke up feeling pretty exhausted, after another full on day harvesting the olives. My body ached and my eyes were heavy, but beneath it all, I looked forwarded to getting back out there, to climbing some trees and using my body the way it is meant to be used.
It's just me and my girls harvesting now. They are pretty eager to help at first but after an hour they always find an excuse to wander off, "I just need to get a drink mum" or "I think I heard Freya Barking, I'm just going to check on her". These are just some of the things that they say.
It's hard going really, but my body was made for this. To climb up walls and stretch my arms as far as they can go, or scaling up the trees, using my weight to maintain my balance. I feel so alive and every time I climb a tree, I automatically revert back to being a kid, wild and free!
It feels so good to be high up, my head popping out above the branches, watching birds flutter from one tree to the next, chirping all the way. Right there and then, I am pretty darn excited to be alive!
Life, doesn't get much better than that.
Harvesting olives that will, in a couple of days be converted in to oil. Oil that will last me a year. My aching body, rewarded by some of the finest organic oil around. I get pretty excited about the whole process, and the liquid gold that will be delivered to me. Anyone who grows their own, knows what that feeling is like!
I feel very content and pleased with myself and so very grateful to my body. Damn but it is exciting to still be pretty agile and to find my joys in some of the most simple and yet rewarding ways. I want to be growing most of my food, to allow the land that I live on to nurture me with it's produce. To work with this sacred space, so that this land benefits from my existence, just as much as I benefit from living here.
To live more in harmony with the land and all that dwell here, that there is another thing that really excites me!
Living like this, allows me to be so much more mindful of all that I do. To really appreciate all the resources that I use. To not take anything for granted. Each moment is a blessing!
Today I feel even more exhausted, there were times where my arms felt like they might just fall off my body. Where I had to express with sound, the amount of energy that was needed in order for me to climb up, stay balanced and knock those olives down. But my body is doing what it was made to do and that excites me, this fulfilled exhaustion excites me.
I have finally finished harvesting all of the olives, so I feel doubly pleased with myself and my achievements. There is quite a lot to think about, from laying out the nets to how you will store the olives until they are ready to be harvested. Which is really no more than 5 days after you harvest them.
When I posted this question to the tribe, I initially thought about the community that I am a part of and all that we have achieved, because all of that makes me excited. On top of that, We have been also been scouting for some land, so that our vision for an eco village, becomes a reality. With everything that has happened this year, I feel so lucky to have connected with my tribe and to feel fully supported and aligned with them. So many reasons to be excited.
But when I really thought about the question, I realized that what I do each day, how I live, this is what excites me the most. Being able to raise my girls the way that I do. So that they grow up, understanding the real value of things and about what really matters.
We choose how we react to things, we choose how we wish to see them and we choose, whether or not our life excites us!