It's
difficult to describe just how satisfying it is eating something you
have grown yourself. Probably because it is more of an adventure than
a moment. The beginning is when you have lusted after a friend's
veggie
patch, quietly envied their seemingly genetic green thumb ('jerk')
and wasted countless hours trawling homesteader blogs (it's garden
porn and you know it).
Then after a while, something or someone tells
you that it's actually not rocket science to grow a lettuce; in fact
it's pretty straightforward. So you spend a day turning a patch of
lawn into a loose bed of soil. You get dirt under your fingernails
and you feel new muscles aching at the end of the day. It feels good,
it feels like action. Then comes that ultimate moment of faith –
trickling out the tiniest seeds in an indentation you drew with a
stick. And you think, really? This little dry bit of thing is going
to transform into a big, showy lettuce with frilly edges? Juicy and
lush? Sure. Whatever.
But you persist. The wisdom of the countless growers before you
becomes an encouraging hand on your shoulder and an encouraging word
in your ear – yep, that's it. It is hard to believe, isn't it?
And
this little patch of earth becomes a place that you want to return
to. You come to water and stare hard at the ground hoping to spot the
first speck of green that will signal success. But then you stay a
while – because while your eye was down at soil level you notice a
bug you have never met before. With a long nose like a
snuffleupagus. It's incredible! You almost call your neighbours over
to see but you restrain yourself. Besides, while you were watching
this beetle a family of black ducks have been making their way down
the rivulet and you don't want to move a muscle for fear of startling
the ducklings. And all around you dew is caught in tiny and intricate
spiderwebs joining blades of grass together. They look like silvery
crocheted granny rugs. The earth is cool under your feet. The world
is waking up and you realise you need to get to work so you leave
your garden for now.
And
weeks later, weeks made richer for your daily pilgrimages to your
little patch, you behold the glory of the lettuce. It's so green it
seems to emanate its own light. And while its hard to really fathom
what's happened between the moment you pressed that seed into damp
earth and this moment of cutting the lettuce head from its base, you
accept it. In the way that you just-kind-of-have-to believe your
parents when they show you a photo of a dimple-bummed baby and say –
this is you. We are mere humans after all and sometimes things
are just unfathomable.
You
cut the lettuce and there is this embarrassingly heroic quality to
the harvest. This beautiful thing you have grown. This food!
And of course you were part of it,
along with the seed, the soil, the compost, the worms, bacteria and
fungi, the rain, the bees and the sun. You didn't just magic this
lettuce from the ground, though it kind of feels like it. But you did
get involved, in the most fundamental aspect of your existence. And I
think it's ok to feel proud of that.
"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
I
have grown food in my various backyards for the past seven years or
so. Even when I have the meagrest of yards with terrible growing
prospects I still feel compelled to grow things. So I'll dig up some
lawn or plant some herbs in pots or a succulent in a tin can. It's
become a part of life that I find difficult to compromise. But it
wasn't until I read Crawford's analysis of what it means to be frugal
that I really grasped why. I wanted to understand something.
You
see, I had spent
five years at university studying anthropology and social work. This
study opened up my mind. Concepts and assumptions were examined,
illuminated, challenged and then torn apart. The pieces were spread
far and wide with utter disregard, perhaps contempt, for the whole.
By the end of my Arts degree I
felt a little torn apart too. Sure, I was inspired and living inches
in the air. Thinking about Everything
yet also getting totally strung out with
all this thinking and all this questioning.
In the end, I was a little bit lost in a quagmire of unknowing. And
wishing I had studied science. Where someone would just tell me: this
here beetle is a Meriphus and it belongs to the Curculioninae
sub-family and it consumes various floral parts, in particular,
pollen, and in so doing aids cross-pollination of plant species. You
know, facts.
I
longed for facts. I could get a little paralysed in an endlessly
self-reflexive analysis of, you know, the very idea of a beetle and
the complex tensions implicit within the nature/human dichotomy and
so on ad nauseam. In the end, I realised it wasn't just about facts.
I craved a world that was intelligible. Or just a bit intelligible.
And the garden, many gardens, became my consolation.
Recall
that whatever
lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only
because you first ate something that grew out of dirt.
- Barbara Kingsolver
- Barbara Kingsolver
I've
made gardening my job. I'm just starting out but this turns out to be
the best job yet and feels more like a livelihood. It helps me to
think not just about soil and seeds and the sun and the rain, but
about economies, culture, work, ethics, philosophy - just about
everything. It's a lens through which I start to understand,
critique, re-imagine and create the kind of world I want to leave for
future generations.
I read somewhere that while we can't change the type of ancestors we
inherit we can affect the type of ancestor we will become. Now my
ambitions are pretty mundane but I want my descendants to know and to
be proud of where their food comes from.
So
there is still a lot of thinking and questioning. But the
scale can fit inside my head. The growth of a radish seed, a
lady-bird hunting aphids, the taste of a tomato when it is so ripe it
falls from the vine, heavy into my hand. The feeling of soil warmed
from the day, the muscles in my arms and legs slowly strengthening to
the tasks I demand of them. Things that make sense.
Originally published in the Autumn 2013 edition of Betty Mag
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