By FruitfulBear
My dynamic shift from a lifestyle of apathy to a fruitful focus on the good, the true, and the beautiful came with a new awareness of the possible origins behind previously trite catchphrases. I started noticing and found myself greatly entertained and oddly fascinated with phrases and sayings I’d grown up with.
In the summer of 2020, I started making the notes that grew into this article. The first time I ever harvested blackberries from a bush, they grew in the front yard of the house I lived in with my mother and sister. Several bushes were growing next to each other, and the hedge they made was brambly and mildly daunting to my newly awoken yard working ability.
I wore sleeves that weren’t thick enough, gloves that weren’t thick enough, and there was a very low yield on these bushes I was harvesting from. At 33 years old, the only food I had ever foraged for was tangerines off a small, short tree at the side of my grandparent’s driveway. By comparison, these blackberries presented as a ‘Thorny Problem.’
I came inside after my earnest endeavors and presented my roughly two cups of blackberries to my family. Delighted with the ‘Fruits of My Labor,’ I grinned as I explained my new thoughts on the ‘Low Hanging Fruit’ concept. The berries, though few, were delicious, and the tangible way I found myself living the phrases that had previously meant so much less was going to ‘Bear Fruit’ of its own for years to come.
We moved to 5 acres in Idaho at the end of 2021 and, in short order, found ourselves getting chickens, goats, ducks, and a garden. It has been an adventure-and-a-half, full of many opportunities to crush and lots of phrases to live. From our chickens, I came to new understandings about the phrases:
- ‘Tough Old Bird’ – when harvesting old roosters
- ‘Cocky’ – the attitude of said roosters every day before they were harvested
- ‘All Cooped Up’ – the behavior of our flock on the rare occasions when we were forced to keep them in their roosting area all-day
- ‘Flew The Coop’ – when we let them out after being cooped up, there is simply no other way to describe them practically launching themselves out the door to get back into the sunshine
- ‘I’ve Got A Bone To Pick With You’ – when cleaning the chicken carcasses, separating all the meat scraps for soup
- ‘She’s a Good Egg’ – I decided this must be shorthand for laying hens that produce good, properly formed chicken eggs
- ‘Chickenshit’ – this insult doesn’t land quite the same after you’ve cleaned out the coop floor under a flock of roosting chickens
- ‘Pecking Order’ – the chickens were developing one of these long before you and your co-workers thought to
- ‘Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be’ – do I really have to explain this one
Now, if we move on for a moment to our ducks, ‘That’s a Whole Different Animal’ and ‘Like a Duck to Water,’ you can easily understand, if you are used to chickens by comparison, that ducks are a bunch of crazy ‘QUACKS!’ But, ‘Like Water off a Ducks Back,’ they don’t really care what the chickens are doing because ‘Birds of a Feather Flock Together.’
Living on a farm and living the phrases that come with it, you find yourself with lots of literal ‘Fences to Mend’ and ‘Gatekeeping’ to do. You ‘Travel The Well Worn Path’ to and from your barn all day. And, when you start finding hay and straw in more places than the sand manages to get to at the beach, you can’t argue against calling the feed bales ‘Flaky.’
When you’re trying to cut the ‘Ties That Bind’ on those same hay bales, and every single chicken that calls your barn home is demanding that you feed them their scratch grains, ‘Underfoot’ is definitely alive for you.
You’ll be tempted to ‘Cry Over Spilled Milk’ and find yourself turning the phrase ‘I’m Working Through It’ into a mantra of grit and endurance. The ‘It’ becomes muscle fatigue, headaches, or any other dis-ease in your life, physical or otherwise. You keep ‘Working Through’ because creatures big and small depend on you and don’t go away just because the work is more challenging to accomplish that day.
It becomes the highest of compliments when, at the end of a hot summer day after the sun has set, that first small breeze blows a whiff of cooling night air into the house, and you consider how nice it is to be compared to a ‘Breath of Fresh Air.’
Watering your garden as the strawberries, tomatoes, and other delectable produce start ripening enough to eat just a few before the full harvest, having ‘First Pick’ has never been more desirable.
Whatever temporary obstacles are between you and your Beartaria, I know you will ‘Get to The Root of the Problem,’ so just keep crushing.
I’ll end for now by wishing you all a ‘Crumby’ life since it means you got to have your ‘Daily Bread.’ And, I’ll ‘Level With You’ that I may reach out again in the future so we can ‘Chew The Fat’ while thinking about some more of our experiences as we live the phrases all around us.
