"Frugality may be only a thin economic rationalization for a movement that really answers to a deeper need: We want to feel that our world is intelligible so we can be responsible for it...Many people are trying to recover a field of vision that is basically human in scale & extricate themselves from dependence on the obscure forces of a global economy".
-Matthew B Crawford (Shop Class as Soulcraft)
This bit of the internet is dedicated to the simple and noble practice of growing food. I've grown food in my backyard/s for the past few years and now I've made gardening my job. I'm just starting out but this turns out to be the best job yet. It helps me to think not just about soil and seeds and the sun and the rain, but about the economy, consumer culture, work, ethics, philosophy - well, just about everything.
Food is a flashpoint through which we can start to understand, critique, re-imagine and create the kind of world we want our children to inherit. I read somewhere once that while we can't change the type of ancestors we inherit we can control the type of ancestors we will become. Now my ambitions are pretty mundane but I want my (possible) descendents to know and to be proud of where their food comes from.
Put simply, we need to learn how to sustain ourselves.
In the next 2 months I will be traveling around the North-East of the states visiting farms and gardens of all shapes and sizes. Aside from sticky-beaking in other people's backyard and market gardens (my all time favourite thing to do ever) I hope to collect ideas, simple designs, well-worn wisdom and straight-out garden genius and share it with you. Whether we need to feed ourselves, our family, our neighbours or a whole town we can, at least try to, use the land we have to grow the food we need.
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