“Is there any way in which this drought is ok?”, a sheep farmer taking part in the Calmer Farmer programme found herself asking, as she began to notice the wearing effects of prolonged worrying on her own wellbeing.

The farming year in the UK has been defined by a record-breaking dry and warm spring, leading to significant challenges such as low crop yields and depleted water resources. Some regions saw a good start with early harvest crops, but other areas are still struggling with drought, and there are ongoing concerns about water scarcity and a need for climate-resilient farming practices all over the country.

Acceptance makes space to respond

The drought has weighed heavily also on the minds of the dairy and sheep farmers in the Calmer Farmer programme. The pastures are poor, which can cause nutritional deficiencies with potential additional problems down the line.

A third-generation dairy farmer on the programme farms a ‘dry farm’, with 30 inches of annual rain, when his neighbours only a few miles down the road can receive double that. After 30 years of farming, droughts have begun to feel easier for him in recent years. Easier for the fact that he has learnt through experience how to mitigate against issues caused by drought, but also because his attitude to them has softened. With a regenerative approach to farming, he is looking for ways to collaborate and work with nature to build resilience on his farm.

“The drought does spend a lot of time occupying my thoughts. I'm 54 this year, so this isn't the first time I've gone through a drought. I actually find it easier every time I've been through something, even if it's difficult, if I've already been through it before.

However, at the moment, how I feel is… I think in this programme you’ve called it greenlighting:

Nature's gonna do what nature does. You know, we're gonna have floods, we're gonna have wet times, we're gonna have good springs, we're gonna have poor springs, and we're gonna have droughts. And I spend less time raging against nature now, than I do just acceptance. And I accept it a lot easier, I've put procedures in place. When a drought starts, or when a drought even begins to start, but I think it might start, I actually adapt my farming, my principles and my practices.”

By greenlighting we mean acknowledging all the aspects of reality that are present and allowing them in our experience instead of denying or pushing them away. Greenlighting isn’t: “It’s not worth crying about, just get on with it” which can seem like acceptance, but may be a form of pent-up denial. Greenlighting asks us to experience and feel the hard stuff alongside other aspects of our reality.

Deciding to accept drought or anything else difficult is not an easy thing to do, but simply acknowledging and being with both the positive and negative aspects of what’s taking place can bring about a sense of relief and inadvertently result in acceptance, as well as open up space for being able to respond in a different, creative manner.

Fighting reality is disconnecting

Worrying about and resisting the reality of what’s happening not only costs lots of energy, placing added pressure on anyone with an already challenging work load, but resistance also creates tension that holds us apart, disconnects us from the flow of life. This recognition is what brought up the sheep farmer’s inner inquiry: “Is there any way in which this drought could be ok?”

“It feels so un-okay, because there's just no grass, and the stock… we're really struggling, and… Having to feed hay, and you can just see the problems coming down the line of that. And I just had this moment, and I just thought, is there any way that this is actually okay? And I just felt some kind peace with it for a while, like… It is ok.

I don't know, there's something about it that is ok, isn't it? And the fight against it isn't connecting. It's quite disconnecting.

But then my rational mind kicks in, I'm like, this is not okay. I don't know how I could rationalise this being okay, but if there's something that I can drop… and it's a dropping down [into the body], isn't it? Where the accepting of what is, is.

Then I felt more connected to the drought in a non-I-hate-you sort of way.”

Intuitive knowing for fresh creative solutions

Letting go of worrying thoughts seems like a difficult thing to do, because we may feel that not worrying will make things worse and result in an unravelling of more chaos, but it is possible to try it in small doses by just turning our attention from the thoughts into the felt sense of the body for a moment and seeing what happens.

Dropping down from the head into the body, from the thinking mind into the felt quality of our experience opens up a perspective of the whole. What our strategic mind deems unacceptable, for the wholeness of life is a natural part of the bigger picture. Letting go of our resistance allows us back into the flow of the whole and into connection with life around us.

It also frees up space for creative solutions and responses to appear. Admitting we are ultimately not in control, admitting we don't know or have all the answers, gives space for a different kind of knowing, a more intuitive knowing. Our rational thinking is always based on some previous thinking, but deep intuition is genuinely fresh and new. Bubbling up without a strategic agenda, intuitive knowing can bring up real eureka moments: truly new, creative approaches our thinking mind alone would not have been able to come up with.