A Lifetime’s Work

The skills that had served me so well in business, renovation, problem-solving and building were still useful. They simply weren’t the whole story.

“I’ll whip it into shape in five years.”

I remember saying it with absolute certainty.
At the time, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable estimate.

The land had not been worked for decades. Forest surrounded the old cottage. Blocked streams trickled or fermented along three of the boundaries. Broken glass lay scattered across the ground and piled into water gullies. Barbed wire fences lay broken and buried. Black wattle had invaded to within metres of the house. The remnants of the main house lay strewn where it had burned decades before. Evidence of previous lives surfaced everywhere, slowly being reclaimed by the forest.

To me, it looked like possibility. Not untouched possibility. Neglected possibility. The sort that responds well to effort. And effort was something I understood.
We weren’t looking for an easier life. We were looking for a different one. And as far as we were concerned, we had found it.

I remember the feeling of driving through the gate with dogs, a cat, a rabbit, a piglet, a five-year-old daughter, and a bakery business. We were already hand-raising three orphaned lambs and had collected an assortment of chickens.

There was no uncertainty. No hesitation.
Only relief. Excitement. Conviction.

After years of searching, it felt as though we had finally found home.

So when I looked across the property and declared that I would whip it into shape in five years, it wasn’t bravado. It was simply how I understood the world.

You assess the situation.
You make a plan.
You break the work into manageable pieces.
Then you get on with it.

That approach had served me well for most of my life. And for a while, it worked here too.

The existing house was little more than an old labourer’s cottage with additions tacked on over time. Small, cold, damp and in a general state of disrepair, it was all we needed.

A new roof. Water tanks. A kitchen sink. A shower. A clean, professional bakery.
We kept it simple because our previous move had already taught us that different spaces and lives require different layouts and structures. Function first, refinements later. We would let it grow and evolve with us.

It took three months of work to establish a functional base. Then we returned to normal life responsibilities — work, home and family.  Our leisure time focused on building a business, caring for animals, learning to farm, and rehabilitating a derelict piece of land.

The place began to change. Some of it dramatically. The sort of progress that rewards effort. The sort of progress that makes lists shorter and gives you confidence that you are moving in the right direction.

I liked that. I liked ending a day able to point at something and say: “That wasn’t done this morning.”

A cleared section of land. A repaired gate. Access to the stream. A pile of rubbish removed. Evidence that the work was working.

Even then the farm seemed determined to reveal a new project every time we completed the current one.

At the time, I found that motivating. There was always another improvement to make. Always another piece of the future we were building becoming visible.

If anything, the early years reinforced my belief that this was simply a larger version of every challenge I had tackled before. More work. A bigger project. A longer timeline. But fundamentally the same thing.

Or so I thought.

One of my first priorities became clearing the broken glass. It was everywhere. Scattered or piled across the land. Buried beneath leaves. Hidden in long grass. Washed into gullies and stream beds.

Every morning and every evening, when we fed the animals, I carried a five-litre bucket and filled it with glass. Then I would empty it and do the same thing the next day. At first, I treated it like any other task.

Collect the glass. Clear the land. Move on.

But every rain exposed more. Pieces that had been buried were washed to the surface, sparkling in places I was certain I had already cleared. Areas I thought were done revealed more glass. Then more. And still more.

What I expected to be a weekend project quietly became part of the rhythm of daily life.

And I was still measuring progress the way I always had. By what had been completed. By what could be crossed off a list. By how much closer I was to finished, how many buckets had been collected.

As the years passed, the bucket became harder to fill.
What had once been a bucket became a handful.
Then a few pieces.
These days, after rain, I might notice a single shard glinting in the sunlight as I walk past. Not because I had finally decided to tackle it properly, but because thousands of small acts had slowly changed the landscape.

A bucket at a time. A handful at a time. A feeding round at a time. Then one day I realised I wasn’t really collecting glass anymore.

Now I was dragging wattle.

Working for Water had cut and poisoned large sections of invasive black wattle. The trees were dead. The problem, I assumed, had been solved. What remained, I thought, was simply the cleaning up and maintenance.

So I dragged branches. Cut trunks. Stacked firewood. Burned brush. Loaded trailers.

The work was satisfying. The piles got smaller. The land opened up. Sunlight reached places it hadn’t reached in years. The mature trees had gone.

The seed bed had not.

Some of what emerged was indigenous. Much of it wasn’t. Everything had been waiting for the same opportunity. What had looked like the end of one job turned out to be the beginning of another, much bigger job.

Glass revealed more glass.
Wattle revealed seedlings.
One repair uncovered another ten.
Each solution created a new set of decisions.

The land never seemed interested in allowing me to reach the end of anything. At least not in the way I was accustomed to. It became exhausting.

Five years became seven. Seven became ten. And still there was work to do.

Looking back, I can see that I was still treating every challenge as a project. And feeling as if I was failing because I couldn’t get the job done.

The tasks changed. The landscape changed. Even we changed.

But the underlying pattern remained remarkably consistent. There was always something that needed attention.

Eventually, I realised there was always something needing attention and it was not because things were falling apart.

It was because they were alive.

Projects move towards completion.
Living systems do not.

The difference sounds obvious now. It wasn’t obvious then.

The skills that had served me so well in business, renovation, problem-solving and building were still useful. They simply weren’t the whole story.

Sometimes I think about the woman standing on that overgrown piece of land, confidently announcing that she would whip it into shape in five years.

I understand exactly why she thought that. The evidence was everywhere.

The house became liveable. The bakery worked. The animals multiplied. The land improved. Year after year there was visible proof that effort mattered.

And effort does matter. Hard work matters. Planning matters. Capability matters.

What I could not see then was that I wasn’t standing at the beginning of a project.

I was standing at the beginning of a relationship.

Fourteen years later, there is still work to do.

There are still trees to cut. Still seedlings to remove. Still fences to repair. And if a storm drops enough timber across the property, there is still a good chance I will look at the pile and confidently estimate that I can clear it in a week.

But these days, when I walk the land, I no longer find myself wondering when the work will be finished.

It was never a project to achieve.

It is a lifetime’s work.

Essay body.

A Small Invitation for This Week

This week, notice where you are expecting completion.

A relationship.
Your health.
A piece of land.
A business.
A family.

Not everything important in life behaves like a project.

Some things ask something different of us.

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