When the Orchard Falls Quiet: On Falling Behind and Getting Back Up

There’s a quiet kind of shame that creeps in when the weeds take over and the plans get dusty. You watch your to-do list grow wild like the edge of a neglected garden, and even the most basic routines start to feel like uphill work. This season, I’ve fallen behind — not from lack of care, but from a combination of financial strain and something heavier: depression.

Farming demands routine. It thrives on rhythm — early mornings, hard stops, careful timing. But depression rewrites the script. It steals sleep at night and drags you into bed long past the sun’s rise. It’s a fog that numbs the urgency you once felt for pruning, planting, and showing up. And in that fog, time slips.

For me, this year was supposed to be a leap forward. I applied to three major grants. One organization lost my application completely. Another lost their federal funding after I spent weeks preparing documents. A third is still in flux, reinventing their process after a merger. I’ve been hanging in the void, trying not to take it personally while watching the season creep by without the tools those funds were meant to provide.

It’s easy to see all this as failure. But farming — like healing — is not linear. When the weather shifts or the soil surprises you, you don’t abandon the land. You pause, reassess, and pivot. I’ve had to rethink what progress looks like. Some days, that means a single tray of seedlings. Some weeks, it’s just fixing the fencing or walking the orchard to check on the chestnuts.

Depression has also forced me to rethink routine. I used to believe productivity was the measure of worth — how much I planted, how clean the rows were, how fast I moved. But now I’m learning to value presence over pace. A slower start is still a start. Rest can be part of the rhythm, too.

What keeps me going is the long view. The trees don’t rush, and neither will I. This delay doesn’t mean the farm is failing. It means we’re in a longer germination phase. There’s still a root system growing, unseen. There are still dreams in the soil, waiting.

If you’re behind too — on your garden, your goals, your healing — I see you. You’re not broken. You’re just in a season that asks for something different.

Fall 2025 is still coming. So is Fall 2026. The chestnuts are still standing. The land is still listening. And I’ll be here, slowly, surely, making my way back to the rows.