There’s something deeply satisfying about driving a post into the earth. Feeling the resistance of soil, the firmness of gravel, the clang of steel on rock. You sweat. You ache. And when it’s done, you stand back and see something real – a fence that will likely still be standing a hundred years from now.
On the farm, work is physical. You build fences. Mend gates. Clear brush. Stack wood. These things don’t just feel productive – they are productive. They leave a mark. A before and an after. A straight line cutting across a green field that says: someone was here, someone cared.
That kind of work has a joy to it that’s hard to describe to someone who spends their days in front of a screen. Don’t get me wrong – there’s value in knowledge work. There’s creativity, complexity, even beauty in solving a tough problem or designing an elegant system.
But most of the time, the impact of that work is abstract. It’s a digital file saved somewhere. A PowerPoint in a meeting. An idea that might – or might not – get built.
Out here, it’s different. You work with your hands, with your family, with your dog trotting nearby, tail wagging and tongue out. You stop to share a sandwich in the shade. You breathe in air that smells like sage and cedar, and you look up at a sky so blue it feels like it was painted just for you.
The fence will hold in cattle. Or mark a boundary. Or simply stand for decades as a quiet testament to effort and care. And that’s enough. That’s more than enough.
In a world of impermanence and distraction, there’s joy in building something solid. Something that matters not because it’s perfect, but because it’s done well.
We weren’t made to live entirely in our heads. Sometimes, we need to come back to the earth. To touch it. Shape it. Leave something behind.
And sometimes, that something is a fence.