What I love about gardening is that it cuts through a lot of divisions and unites us as people. Gardening unites us, because we all have to eat. The larger questions of environmentalism are deduced to the question of our ability to produce and sustain ourselves.
Are you able to feed yourself? Can you really get in there-in the dirt and read what the soil is telling you? Do dandelions in the far corner of the yard tell you that the soil is alkaline? What else might you grow there?
Can you feed yourself?
A little piece of land is an American dream, yet how many really make use of that land. Grass is pretty, but I don't want to eat it. As a young adult newly out of my teen years, my father told me about his people-people who owned land during the depression. They also owned shops and livestock. They had tanneries, were butchers farmers, and seamstresses. They had businesses that originated from the land and fulfilled the need to survive and be self-sustaining.
"The Depression didn't hurt them as hard as most folks. . .they could barter with what they had. They raised livestock they could slaughter and barter for what they needed. . "I dreamed of my father's people, my relatives, generations ago, making a life from the land. I decided then that what people need to live is food not money. In my mind a fundamental social problem of our society had a resolution.
People need food to live. You can't eat paper, I would announce to one of my more conservative college roommates.
The simplicity of my resolution to poverty seemed to fall on deaf ears. My college roommates began to see me as someone falling off the deep-end, but I stuck to my dream. One day, I'd have my own homestead, where I would grow food, make clothes and have a horse.
Yes, I said horse. Though later, I would think hopelessly that if the people in hell wanted ice water and they weren't getting it, how the hell did I think I could have a horse!I feel strongly that to be able to garden, homestead, or farm is to have dignity. There is a certain dignity in being able to take care of yourself, of being self-sufficient.
How green is your garden?
How green are you?
What makes you green?
To me, these questions are irrelevant. The question that is life-giving and life sustaining is how can I provide for myself in a way that allows me to hold my head up with dignity instead of a head held low in guilt our shame.
At this time in my life, I can see that I am part of an interdependent web-an ecology where relationships with people, places, the earth, the ground, the dirt, animals, larger institutions like banks etc all have a place in shaping and creating me. I, in turn, also shape these things in relationship, in a social ecology. The question is no longer what color is your garden
if it ever was. . .The question is how do you sustain the relationships that will product and sustain life, earth, love and dignity.
Information Sources of Inspiration:
- The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living by Fritof Capra
- Fritof, Capra's website: http://www.fritjofcapra.net/bibliography.html
- Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
- Race During the Great Depression Library of Congress http://memory.loc.gov:8081/learn/features/timeline/depwwii/race/race.html
- African-Americans in Virginia after Emancipation http://www.balchfriends.org/bhmap.htm
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