A Year of Slow Growth

It has been almost a year since we made our way to Tennessee and opened the next chapter of our lives. Within that year there has been growth, transition, and a lot of learning.

We marked our first holidays here — Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. We welcomed the birth of our sweet girl. We celebrated birthdays, started a new school year, and found a new church home. And we finally closed on the land. I released a self-published cookbook. I am learning how to grow a community, and I am learning to give myself grace — the quiet acknowledgment that it is all right to take it slow.

Interplanting Okra and Zinnias with a bird bath in the summer garden, Memphis

The growth may feel slow to me. In an era when immediate satisfaction is treated as automatic, that same pace may look quick to someone else. I know rebuilding a business while bootstrapping the whole way is not ideal. The grind is still worth it. So many of the dreams I carried as a girl, and even as a young adult, are coming true. Things I once prayed for, things that felt far-fetched even as a thought, are tangible now. Some of them have already been accomplished.

What I did not expect from the slow pace was the room it made. Evenings opened back up. I started reading books again after the house settled. I returned to slow planning and sketches, pages with no deadline on them. I journaled more. I prayed more. That quiet did not feel like falling behind. It calmed me. It made gratitude easier to see — the land, the baby, the table, the ordinary days that did not need to be impressive to count. Sometimes the stillness is where I learn the most.

Early Brassicas going into the garden, Memphis, The Wild Bloom Garden.

A year of slow growth is moving into a year of work.

I really did expect myself to arrive in Tennessee, have a baby, buy land, and have a whole working farm — all while homeschooling, caring for the home, and raising six children. That is not reality, and I should never have put that much pressure on myself. That is the grace I need to learn, and return to often. I tend to load my plate and think I am superwoman, then get disappointed for being human.

As I type this, I am already in the next steps. Even though I want to jump straight into growing, I cannot. I am printing soil-testing documents, planning my next drive and day at the farm, getting utility lines marked, and trying to find a surveyor. I would also love to meet the neighbors I will soon be living among, so I am working on an idea for that too.

I am trying to carry the evenings with me into that work. The reading, the sketches, the journal, the prayer. The year ahead can be a year of building without becoming a year of noise. If the stillness taught me anything, it is that slow is not the same as stuck.

If you are in a slow season too, you are welcome at this table. Tell me what the quiet has been teaching you. And if you want to walk the next year with us — the soil tests, the first plantings, the meals, the ordinary days — stay close. Seed to Plate is one season at a time, and there is room for you in it.

From the beds at Wild Bloom — Seed to Plate, one season at a time.

Serena