By Edmundo Y. Cejar
MALUNGON, Sarangani (MindaNews) — After many years of toiling in the workplace or running a business, one looks forward to a more relaxed, quiet, and uncomplicated life. At that stage of one’s life, the primary goals are how to stay healthy and live longer. Some succeed. Others don’t.
Self-improvement coach London-based Eliza Hartley says that studies on retirees who thrive after retirement exhibit nine particular habits. These are regular physical activity, lifelong learning, maintaining strong social connection, sticking to a routine, practicing mindfulness, giving back to the community, embracing change, healthy eating habit,s and keeping a positive outlook.
To the question of where and how a retiree will get the best opportunity to practice all these, I say on a farm. Away from the hubbub of the city. It does not matter whether it is half a hectare or fifty hectares. Also, it does not matter whether you do just leisure farming or a serious affair.
Regular physical activity
Lifting weights in a gym, running in a park, or hitting balls on the green are good exercises. But tending a small orchard or a vegetable garden, and raising a few heads of goats or sheep or poultry, require more physical activity. There are more than enough activities on the farm to exercise your muscles and bones. Of course, you can run or jog on the farm road or lift a sack of corn, too.
You also breathe fresher air. You even get to eat healthier food from your garden. And working the soil and caring for farm animals are therapeutic.
Lifelong learning
Especially if you have no farming background, nothing offers you more learning opportunities than farming. What crops are suited for your farm’s climate, soil, terrain, and rainfall? What is the market demand for these crops? How can you make some money from your vegetable garden or orchard or chicken? How do you grow organic bananas or pomelo? How do you make natural concoctions to drive away pests and diseases? How do you make kimchi from your cabbage or jam from your guavas? There are a million new things to learn to keep your mind active.
Maintaining strong social connection
You make new friends and maintain frequent interaction with agricultural technicians, veterinarians, farm supply storeowners, buyers of your products, other farmers, your neighbors, and the village people. You can join farmers’ associations and attend training on new farming technology or value-adding. You strengthen family bonds when you involve your adult children and their families who come to visit you from time to time. If you have a big farm and can afford it, you may even put up a family vacation house on your farm where the family gathers on holidays.
Sticking to a routine
After years of daily routine in your former work or running your business, your mind and body will look for it after you retire. Nothing “forces” you to keep a daily routine than farming. On a farm, the day is ruled by schedules. There is time to feed and give water to your animals. When to weed or water the plant? When to prune your cacao trees? When to harvest your bananas? There are hundreds of tasks to be done on specific time, place, frequency, duration, etc. Farm work never ends.
Practicing mindfulness
In your past life, the demands of work or business kept your nose on the ground most of the time. You had little time to admire the beauty of nature, experience the serenity of a meadow, observe the flying courtship of crows in the sky, see the sun breaking over the mountain in the east, reflect on yourself, and even carry on a daily conversation with your God. You forget yourself and, sometimes, your family in the pursuit of success. The farm will provide you the opportunities to revisit yourself, make up to the family for lost time, feel the grandeur of God’s creations, and reconnect with Him more closely.
Giving back to the community
There are many ways to share your good fortune in the rural areas. Contribute to community projects. Adopt a scholar. Mentor farmers’ associations. Support the church. Buy school supplies, shoes, school bags for indigent students. Educate farmers on environmental issues.
Embracing change
Moving from a rat race at work or business to the more relaxed environment of a farm is a big deal. It demands a major change in your mindset, attitude, behavior, and lifestyle. It demands you discard certain old beliefs. You learn new skills. You grow. You become a new you.
Healthy eating habit
Hippocrates said, “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.”
By the time you retire, you may have medical conditions from overwork, stress, a bad diet, and a lousy lifestyle. Heart issues. Hypertension. Arthritis. Eye problem. Even more serious issues like cancer. Fresh, healthy naturally – grown food, especially those with medicinal properties produced on your farm or bought in local markets, will help you in your healing journey.
Lastly, keep a positive outlook.
Once I asked a 50ish Blaan friend why he grows corn every year instead of planting coconut in his farm. His answer was “I won’t live long enough to benefit from them.” He was practically saying he would die in five to six years. Coconut starts to be productive in five to six years.
Another Blaan friend, about the same age, continues planting coconut. He says he is going to live up to 70 years old and “after I die, my children will benefit from the coconuts I am planting.”
Again, studies show that people with a positive attitude outlive those with a negative attitude.
Live by the day. Enjoy life and plan to live a hundred years.
An invitation
Answer to the call of farm life. I did it. My family and I have never been happier. Ask my wife!
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Edmundo Y. Cejar is a regenerative farming practitioner and a natural reforestation advocate. Before shifting to farming, he worked for Dutch Philips Discrete Semiconductors, Gillette, Union Carbide, and Davao Fruits.)
