well, what have you done with your life?

 

If I had anything to say, it would be this: Grow Food. Grow some fucking food.

I've never heard a real reason not to. You eat? Grow some of it.

It doesn't have to be a lot. I always say, an upside down tomato and a basil plant counts. I have every reason to believe that if you did that, you'd do more. Or you'd find something you WANT to grow and grow that instead. Lettuce and radishes are easy. Grow some potatoes in a bucket and discover what potatoes CAN taste like!

In fact, that taste bit, that's a HUGE reason to grow some of your own food. A tomato that was ripened on the vine and still warm from the sun? Corn that is not 15 minutes from the stalk to the butter? A chicken that lived it's life free eating bugs and weeds and and wasn't bred to fall over dead at 12 weeks old and yes, takes a tooth to chew just a little and has some color in his muscles?

Another bit is all the stuff you get to learn. pH is suddenly relevant and comprehensible. An annual, biennial, or perennial? Determinate or indeterminate? Perfect flowered, self fertile, or needs cross pollination? Why do flea beetles want to eat my eggplants and is there some other plant they'd prefer?

And that's just the biology and chemistry sorts of things. There's also patience. And perseverance. And delight.

There's discovery. I didn't know I loved poke greens. I really had no clue that propagating native plants was something that somehow makes my heart sing just a little. Not as much as horse breath but still. Honestly at my age it's a lot better than falling off a horse.

Physically it's just good for you. We just don't move enough to begin with, so a little aerobic activity, a little harder muscle work, a little yoga bending and stooping and getting up again. Sure, eventually, there's an end to it, but a whole lot of it ending is due to non-use. Use it or lose it.

It's good for the mind, meditatively as well as intellectually.

And it SHOULD be good for the earth. Anything that you eat that isn't produced by industrial farming is better for the earth. And I don't care how “organic” you eat – have you BEEN or an “organic” farm and SEEN how much plastic they use? But you have the opportunity every day to fix some carbon. Sure, it's a tiny amount, but you fixed some AND you caused some other to not be released so that's doubled already. And that's true for all of this. You can help pollinators AND NOT cause them to be poisoned by someone else because you aren't supporting that little bit of it. Surely your nitrogen isn't going to be derived from the Haber-Bosch process but from composting some waste and some weeds, which is ALSO going to lessen your waste stream AND help some animals and bacteria. Perhaps you are taking some of that wasteland we call lawns out of production to use it to grow some food, so that's good too.

So many things. So.many.things. And we haven't even gotten to all the parts about processing what you grow. But it's all that stuff all over again. I personally believe in good health effects from food that is grown wholesomely and nearby. And if you haven't ever tasted hominy you made from corn you grew, or mozzarella from milk you milked, or learned the secret of keeping eggs fresh for a year, well, what have you done with your life?

What's more, what are you going to do with it? Is it really meaningful to slog to work and slog back home? Does it make a difference to anyone's life? To your own? What is the cost of hitting the gym instead of the garden? Of traveling for amusement instead of finding amusement at home? Is not the garden and the kitchen and time spent with others a better use?

Pray before I am misconstrued, this isn't all one does. One can still work, travel, eat at a (hopefully mom & pop) restaurant. I do not mean to tie men to the wood chopping block and women to the wood burning stove. I mean to open things up, not close them down. I mean to make things that matter more matter more, and things that matter less matter less. Provide some perspective.

There is nothing more interesting than a person who is really, honestly interested in something. And since we have to eat, food might as well be one of the things we are passionate about.