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The year in review

(post, Harriet Fasenfest)

I suppose, in review, that the year and my efforts in the garden offered much by way of substance. I do not know if I will ever get the chickens or goats I think about, even though they would round out the homestead. Evidently there is a limit to my time and space. 

If I were a younger woman, I might move to a larger spread. But this experiment, this living off while on the grid, is the thing I am most interested in. And even though it is still unclear to me what it means to be an urban homesteader, slowly I move closer to a life that feels sane. 

Every year I harness more of the labor I have outsourced to others — the growers and processors, the designers and manufacturers. Every year I make the loop between my life as a producer and consumer a little bit smaller by moving the marketplace from the streets to the backyard, by changing the merchandise I bring home from factory-made to handmade — by my hands. 

By the simplest of logic, these efforts create frugality and invention. If I wear, eat, and enjoy that which I produce, all things will be considered by a new set of standards, since there are only so many hours in the day. I am quite sure that the sweat of one's brow is a self-limiting reality. Not that I want to take away jobs, dismantle industry, deny the arts, or go back to eating hardtack, but most jobs and efforts are increasingly far-flung and unruly and how, in my mind, can I give to others what I will not do myself? 

Or, perhaps more accurately, how can I value what I buy or support if I have not attempted the work myself? 

It is easy to dismiss the effort and/or increasing missteps of industry when we are sheltered from the process. Perhaps when we understand that soil is our greatest asset and responsibility, we will review everything that comes from it with a more discerning eye. And to be clear, it all comes from the soil. It is hard to remember this or, more accurately, hard to take it seriously, having been removed from the truth for so long. We city kids know pavement and design, not crops and soil.

[%image reference-image float=left width=400 caption="Preserves for the winter; produce from good soil."]

I do not grow food because I do not have the money to buy it. Rather, I want to see if it is possible. I want to see if a city slicker like me (55 years old and born and raised in the Bronx) can do it and what I will learn. I do it to find solutions to the craziness of the world around us and to maybe share those solutions with others.    

It is my belief that when we take the time to personally grow, harvest, and preserve our food for the year, we are less likely (and more importantly, our kids will be less likely) to indulge the petty preferences of fussy and "discriminating" palates. We will better know the hard work it took to put that food on our table. We will no longer indulge the manipulated space between the good earth and the table, the soil, and the grocery shelf, nor the spiraling insanity of marketing that assumes, no requires, our amnesia. Only then will we see the thing for what it is, born of the soil no matter how many steps removed. 

And when we ask of ourselves, "Who grew it, how, and where?" it will not be an ethic fed and sold to us by industry. Rather, it will be something we ask ourselves as true defenders of the soil. Only then will the words "organic" and "sustainable" stop functioning as branding.   

It is also my belief that growing food leads to understanding the real health of the economy. I tread lightly here because, in truth, I don't like the word or notion of economic systems since they are a fairly recent equation in the history of the world. They are, and were, designed to measure the health of industry, not nature, people, or the planet. That any of those other things were factored in at all was simply a by-product of a much larger agenda.  

It is important to keep that in mind. Despite this legacy of obscurity, the only true sign of our economic health is our soil, for it is from the soil that civilizations sprang. It is from the rich deltas and river basins of the world that food to nourish communities and culture began. It is our soil, air, and water, and not some odd replacement currency, that should guide us. 

Whether in our nation, globe, or home, the health of any economic system lies in its ability (and commitment) to protect these limited resources. A more classic definition of economic systems does not suggest this and certainly does not suggest a value of stewardship. Academia and experts have befuddled us, have turned the simple truth into an abstract science. They speak in a language and logic that sounds important and relevant, but I tell you they are as confused as we are. They are scrambling to hold on to a system that is unhinged because they, too, have forgotten the basic truth: that the health of people, the planet, and our economy starts and stops with the soil.  

Take away clean water, air, and healthy soil, and see how long things last, money in the bank or not. But that is what I mean when I say growing food helps you understand the true heart and health of any economic system. Once you come to grips with the fundamental truth and need for healthy soil, you begin to see all other things as secondary or, at least, relational to it. You begin to see all the things as part of a replacement economy.   

And you wonder how you have allowed yourself to value the replacements more, particularly when the source is so sick. And you make corrections; you pick up the shovel and you go back to protecting the only thing worth leaving our children. And once we take the time to renew the effort in the microcosm of our daily lives, we will better understand, and read, the meltdown and betrayal of the “American Dream” for what it is: a stolen future.  

I will say, and say it strongly, that none of the good old days will ever return if we do not take the time to recognize that most of the truth attached to the good old days were very rarely good. Every step away from the soil and our stewardship of it has been a misguided step. Or, at least, taken with the assumption that the soil was dirt and would endlessly sustain us. But that has been our folly, and the natural world is informing us of it.  

It will not be the economists, technology, government, politicians, or the stock market that will solve the problem or afford us some measure of health, sanity, peace, and equity in the years ahead. Rather, it will be from the fruits of our own labor and the sweat of our own brows, each of us individually taking back the effort of closing the loop, renewing the soil, and tending to our own backyards in a way that will open the world to possibilities.  

I know all this sounds preachy, but what do you do when you feel something is important? I just offer what has given me some semblance of sanity. 

It is my ultimate hope that once we return to the requirements of the soil and blessings of the table, we will challenge the type of otherworldly hyperbole that arises when we imagine ourselves masters of the universe. That once the the ethic, privilege, and ridiculous claims of our chosen-ness is finally silenced, we will get down to the business of loving our brothers, sisters, and planet in a way that might keep the greed and guns at bay.     

Will growing and preserving your own food do all this? Maybe not. But I’ll keep on keeping on, if only with a few less peaches.


reference-image, l