Full sun

Every packet said "full sun." In Colorado it nearly killed everything. What the land taught me about the one move almost every leader skips.

Each summer in Colorado teaches us hard lessons running our farm.

One of the first lessons we had to learn was all about planting seeds. 

Every seed packet we have ever bought says the same thing. Full sun. Six to eight hours. Find a bright, open spot and watch it go. So that's what we did when we started planting at Sweet Earth Orchard. Open ground, full Colorado sun, exactly as instructed. And we watched a lot of it shrivel. Seedlings that should have thrived by every label on every packet just cooked. Curled up and quit on us. 

Here's what took us too long to understand. 

The packet wasn't lying, exactly. It was written for somewhere else. For gentler light, softer summers, rain that actually falls. Out here, at altitude, under a sun that doesn't negotiate, there's scarcely a plant on our farm that doesn't want at least a little shade. The instruction was confident, universal, and yet, completely wrong for this particular piece of land. 

The only way we ever found that out was by watching.

The first principle of permaculture is the one nobody puts on a poster, because it doesn't sound like progress. Observe and interact. Before you build the beds, before you plant the trees, before you fix anything: watch. The old guidance is that on a new piece of land you observe for a full year. One complete turn of the seasons before you commit to a single permanent decision. 

A year. 

Of watching. 

While every instinct you have is screaming at you to do something. 

I think about that instruction a lot now, because it is the exact move almost none of us make with our own lives.

The leaders I work with are, almost without exception, the most capable people in any room they walk into. They've built the company, hit the number, earned the title. So when something feels off, their response is the one that has always worked: do more. 

New system. New tactic. New hire, new plan, harder push. 

The whole reflex points forward. And I understand it, because it was mine for years. James Clear says you never rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. I used to read that and go fix my systems:

New scorecard, new routine, new structure. Some of it helped. But the same gap kept reopening, and I kept reaching for the same lever. The honest answer, when I finally slowed down enough to see it, was that I had never actually observed my own life. I was acting on land I'd never watched. Reaching for the fix before I understood the patterns. Planting in full sun because the packet said so, then blaming the seeds.

There's a client I work with (they are really a composite of several, but you'd recognize them). They have done everything right. The business is real. The success is real. And somewhere in the last couple of years a quiet question moved in and won't leave. 

For some, it sounds like why isn't this enough? 

For the ones who have already sold and stepped back, it's sharper: who am I when I'm not building anything? 

And what do they reach for? More doing. 

Another venture, another board seat, another optimization of a life that doesn't need optimizing. 

It's the only tool that's ever worked, so they swing it harder. But you cannot out-build a question that lives underneath the building. Who you're being, the stance you bring before you take a single action, sits upstream of all of it. Change what you do without touching who you're being, and the change quietly reverts. The results come back. The gap reopens. You can't out-work the thing that's generating the result, and you certainly can't out-think it. Because this is the part I keep relearning: you cannot think your way into a different life. 

It happens at the pace of being, not doing. Slowly. By watching. 

The land won't be hurried, and it turns out neither will you.

Now, here's the part that surprised me most, and it's the reason I'm not just telling you to slow down and breathe. Observation isn't passive. It isn't navel-gazing. On the farm, watching is active. You notice where the wind comes from. You see where the water wants to go. You try one small thing and you watch how nature answers. It's tinkering and noticing, not sitting still with your eyes closed. 

When we finally observed instead of obeyed, everything changed. We gave the main garden shade cloth. The plants stopped wilting. The soil held its moisture. It drank less of our precious water, and of course it became a far more pleasant place to be — which meant we spent more time out there, which meant it got more attention, which meant it thrived. A whole virtuous loop. 

And it started not with doing more. It started with watching. That's the move. Not effort. Attention.

The reason most of us never make that move is brutally simple. 

You cannot execute and reflect at the same time. The brain won't run both at once, the mode that does the doing and the mode that does the seeing are different machinery, and the busier you are, the more completely the doing crowds the seeing out. 

The leaders who most need to stop and watch are exactly the ones whose calendars guarantee they never will. 

My version of the year of watching is a walk on this farm. No phone. No agenda. Longs Peak doing what she's done for 70 million years, which is absolutely nothing, in no hurry whatsoever. Almost everything I actually know about my own life, I noticed out there. Not at the desk.

So before you set the second-half goals for 2026, before you fix the next thing, here's the question that closes the first chapter of something we have been writing: 

What in your life is quietly thriving that you've never once stopped to credit? 

And what keeps wilting, no matter how much effort you pour into it, what might that be telling you about where it's planted? 

Sit with that one. Don't solve it. Watch it. Most people are trying to change a life they've never actually watched. Observation comes first. Always.

This came out of a reflection journal Kathy, Dana and I are writing: twelve permaculture principles as a lens for a life, not a garden. If you'd like the introduction and this first principle, just reply and I'll send it your way. I read every response. 

And if the honest truth is that you can't remember the last time you watched anything without a screen in your hand, that's not a problem to solve at your desk. Come walk the farm with me. That's usually where it starts. 

Just email me to book your farm walk.

Farm Update

It's been a bit of a slow start to the spring. First we started off with no water (rain, or irrigation), then thankfully finally some rain came with the irrigation water along with it.

One of the most amazing happenings has been with our ducks and chickens. They got all broody and started nesting and now we are the proud grandparents of 10 new Runner ducks, 5 Muscovies, and 23 baby chickens to date. Which is great because the demand for our eggs is very high and we are looking forward to our new birds growing up and bolstering our flocks so we can produce more.