Regenerate

Most people I meet seem to think that they can learn something from me when it comes to growing. I write not to say that what I do is the right way or the only way or even that it is mine. I write to share my experience over the years.

Nature abhors a bare ground. Walk through a forest and you will notice that every inch is covered, each plant, each log, each bit of moss and lichen serve their purpose. I do not blame myself or others for thinking that the best way to grow something is to make sure that there are no "weeds" or anything else growing between the targeted species. It started with industrial agriculture. It made the harvesting of crops easier and more economical. Now it is destroying the soil. 

Take a moment to imagine that you are your favorite bug and that you have just flown into a field of your favorite fruit or vegetable. A smorgasbord. A free for all. You eat, unimpeded, hopping or flying from one leaf to the next until you are so full that you can eat no more. You call your brothers and sisters and friends and cousins. That's what this type of growing provides. So the people come in and try to save what is being taken. People have this idea of mine and not yours. People have this idea of existing separately from nature. 

Then the people that are mad at the people that use chemicals from paint companies and from the war machine decide that they will no longer eat this "conventional" food. They think that they are doing their bodies a a service, and they may be. Their eating organic may be better for their body than eating conventional. What most don't know is that both crops are sprayed. Both crops are heavily managed. Both crops are unnatural. And both crops harm the earth by killing the very mycorrizae, bacteria, and nutrients that exist within the soil. Anybody remember a little state called Oklahoma? The Dustbowl.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't? No. There is another way.

You are still your favorite bug. You are still searching for your favorite fruit or vegetable. This time there is no smorgasbord. This time there are smells and sounds and different colors and shapes and the sky is buzzing with enemies and allies and you don't know which are which. It is a goddamn jungle out there. That's life. That's how we share. That's how we get back to serving nature. That is the beginning of the end of every problem. 

How you ask?

Well…every problem stems from the false notion of separation. Most of us see this problem, if we are even aware enough to see it, as separation from one another. It runs much deeper. It starts with our separation from the earth and spreads like a virus, like a plague of your favorite bugs attacking all that you hold dear. And you sit back and think that there is nothing you can do.

Find out where you food comes from. Is the farmer regenerating the land on which he grows? Is the farmer creating an ecosystem that fosters a variety of species that serve not only her but each other. Search the web for regenerative farms. Can't find any in your area, ask the farmers near you why they aren't practicing regenerative farming. 

The problem is deep. The problem is concrete, and more, the problem is the control that we think we need to exert over what lies beyond the concrete. Am I getting too far out there? I'm not just talking about cement anymore, so I will reign it back in and let you know what you can do should you wish to leave this earth in halfway decent shape for your children and your children's children.

Do not spray anything. Write letters to the companies and businesses that sell the poisons that cause our cancer. Write to politicians. Buy from the farmers that live closest to you. Grow your own damn food. But I don't know how.

Start with mint. Don't like mint, start with arugula. Don't like arugula, start with rhubarb. Don't like any of that? Change your tastes because when did health become about what feels good? I'll tell you…when they started planting in rows and spraying poison on the earth and realizing that as long as what was packaged was filled with salt, sugar, and fat, we would eat it. We would buy it like fat, mindless gluttons while lining their pockets. Once the people with money decided for us what we wanted, got us hooked on these drugs, and then made them available in mass quantities while phasing out nutrients and other necessities a new business could be born. Keeping us sick! Enter pharmacy…ah, but I digress.

Look at any problem. You cannot fight the problem. You must know who is benefitted by keeping the problem a problem. These are the people you must fight. 

I began writing this with the idea that I would talk about what you might do to make the place where you live more like nature while still feeding yourself and your health and your spirit and your neighbors. I want to help you, wherever you are to enter into a relationship with from what you came. 

Look around your neighborhood. What grows naturally? What grows without inputs from you or others. Find edibles that are in the same genus. What perennials grow well in your are? What do you want to experiment with?

Waste nothing. Some of your neighbors will be gracious enough to leave brown paper bags filled with biomass on their curbs. These are there for the taking. Find a corner of your yard where you might store these. Have a water source for birds. Another for frogs. If you are growing a fruit tree, plant other coppice trees around it. Don't know what coppice means? I'm going to pull a Leon George: "Look it up." In New Orleans I use moringa and cassia pendula. These can also protect the young fruit tree because both are slow growing. 

Practice STUN: a term coined by Mark Shephard that stands for sheer and total utter neglect. Want to grow a tree? Start fifty seeds and give none of them any love other than a passing I LOVE YOU. I am not kidding. Have fun. Nature has no word for failure. Nature has no word for mistake.

I grow malabar spinach and longevity spinach and molokhia and chives and other plants that need no care right outside my back door. If you live in Wisconsin, maybe you don't get to eat oranges. Maybe that's they way it should be. Maybe you should get them only on Christmas like my grandmother did. 

There are some books, too.

My favorites are:

One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukoaka

Sowing Seeds in the Desert by Masanobu Fukuoka

Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmiller

Edible Forest I and II by Dave Jacke with Eric Toensmiller

Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shephard