Failure is good?

"Yesterday's failures are today's seeds that must be diligently planted to be able to abundantly harvest tomorrow's successes."
- Author Unknown

I read this then reread it then posted it in my drafts so I could think about it some more.  I always believed that I learned more when things went wrong.  In the computer lab, I would spend hours and hours fixing my own and other people's mistakes.  My job centered around the computers failing to do what the artist wanted.  In essence my job was built around failures.  I experienced the same thing with sewing.  I spent years making mistakes until one day I made an entire dress without needing to rip out anything.  I reread the directions to see what I missed.  Nope...no where in there did it say rip out seams.  I sometimes joked that there were no errors just new designs.  Nice joke but doesn't fly when I put a sleeve in backwards.  Bottom line is in the learning process I failed a lot.  But I didn't make a big deal about it because I cut myself some slack for learning.  I told people that I learned to sew by trial and error, my errors were a real trial. 

I sat here thinking about this and I thought about our garden in Washington state.  We happened to live south of Spokane in a tiny little town that is one of the coldest spots in the continental United States.  Hard freezes in every month of the year.  (Yes, we often wore coats to watch fire works for the 4th of July.)  We had a double lot so there was room for a huge garden.  The first year I planted like crazy and watch the frost kill most of it.  Then we planted potatoes that could take the cold weather.  When we dug them up we ended up with about as many as we planted.  We failed year after year.  We were determined.  DH took a soil sample to the county and asked them what we needed to change our garden from fail to success.  We added a bunch of manure, peat moss by the bails, and a bunch of other stuff that was depleted from the ground in the area.  We planted 20 lbs of seed potatoes.  A few years before we planted 10 lbs and dug up 10 pounds.  I weeded, watered, pulled ugly bugs off the plants (I tried to avoid using pesticides therefore plucking bugs did the job) and generally had faith that what we did would make a difference.  Harvest time finally arrived.  DH went out to dig up the first potato plant.  He came back in filthy and told me to call our friends that lived out in the country.  He asked him to bring his shovel and help dig potatoes.  Our friend asked us how many potatoes we planted.  We told him 20 lbs.  His response, "Well, that is all your going to dig up."  We bribed him with dinner for his family if he would come and help.  DH and his friend dug potatoes all afternoon.  When all were dug up, we weighed just the uncut potatoes, over 600 lbs (about 275 kg).  We had another couple of hundred pounds of potatoes that were cut from the shovels.  We fed our family, their family and we gave away a couple of hundred lbs of potatoes.  Some of the potatoes were the size of footballs.  It took only one potato to feed a family of 8.  We ate them all winter long.  I made our own french fries, baked, mashed, raw (from the ground they are pretty tasty) you name it and I cooked it.  Some of the things I learned from this experience.  We asked experts.  We listened to advice.  We followed through and actually did what was suggested.  We accepted limitations of our area, planting potatoes that could take the cold instead of tomatoes that froze up and died.  We accepted correction.  We were persistent.  We put in a lot of crap.  The work was intensive at first.  But the work paid off.  Failure is good when I allowed it to change me and seek better answers.  Failure is good when I use it as a stepping stone to success.  Failure is good when I don't let failure defeat me. 


Pictures from my first week of Digital photography: