My husband, T-roy as we like to call him, has become a bird nerd like the ones in the movie, The Big Year, with Jack Black and Steve Martin. He shared with me recently that in some agricultural areas, farmers are having trouble with the pollination of crops due to the insane decrease in birds and other pollinators. That’s a problem ya’ll. Mono-cropped fields sprayed with pesticides and round-up ready, hold no native plants and flowers. We might consider these “weeds”, but these sterile fields have nothing to offer a pollinator. No food, no habitat. Even organic farms that do not plant diverse cropping or practice regenerative agricultural /permaculture are guilty of driving down the population of pollinators. So, what do we do? Well, we’ve got to focus on our circle of control. We buy local. We support regenerative ag/permaculture/re-wilding projects. And lately, we’ve been trying to make the yard, less yard-y. Less cut grass. More pollinator areas. More natives. More flowering herbs. T-roy even started a native nursery behind the garden in order to produce more of our own plants for our property. We’ll plant them around the yard and garden as best we can to bring more pollinators onto the property. Thanks to two friends in particular who are helping to education us and to provide native seeds, cuttings, etc, we are giving it a go. What small gesture can you make today for pollinators?
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Time-change.
Maybe its time to change like the leaves do on the trees. Maybe its time to change from over-busy to lazy-cozy. Maybe winter is what we need. Maybe darkness and moonlight and stillness and rest is required to bud in the Spring. Maybe its all relative. Maybe. Its autumn. I and feel the wave of tiredness wash over me. “Time to rest,” my body says. And at 42 I feel it more than ever. We made our last harvest this week. The last of the okra, eggplant, peppers, and holy basil. Usually by this time I would have laid the fall layer of compost and planted the root crops by now. But this year, I am off. I wonder if the long summer drove me away from the garden. I allowed myself to get side-tracked by the heat. I hear about all the hardships that farmers in our region had this summer. Some of them have folded their farms. Some are continuing because what else will they do. I think, “thank goodness I still have the option to go to the grocery store for produce.” And I wonder about how we will fare in years to come.
I’ve been learning more about native plants and their medicinal uses. I am learning how hardy they are and sometimes I wonder why I keep cultivating a garden that is less resilient when all these other native greens and plants exist. Its harder though now that all the knowledge has been lost. The knowledge of what’s what and how to process each plant. I finally got most of my prints from Drawn to Grow loaded onto my website. It almost killed me. All this technology I am forced to get used to. But I tell myself that I must keep up. And there’s a big question for me this fall, “what’s next?” And I don’t know the answer. I meant to write a post about composting and even titled it so but all that came out of me was writing about returning home…so here I go. The hubs and I made it home from our summer of travels a few days ago and now have the dirty job of cleaning out the weeds and dead stuff from the garden. It is a mess but there are still some drought and heat resistant plants living and we plan to make the most of them. From what I can tell, we still have okra, Malabar spinach, peanuts, herbs, hot peppers and what looks like melon. Some of our tomatoes and eggplants are still alive and flowering and I am wishing for fall fruits from them. It was such a treat to walk out to the garden to cut herbs for our first meal back. We’d so missed the flavors and aromas of fresh herbs. Yesterday I visited Fightin’ville Fresh Farmers’ market and was thrilled to find so many farmers and growers with pasture raised ducks eggs to sweet potato tortillas, no spray bell peppers, fermented foods, cooking pears, homegrown cucumbers and much, much more! For $35 I returned home with 2.5 dozen eggs and two bags of fresh produce as well as two free books. I was welcomed with hugs from my favorite vendors and it felt so wonderful to be connected to my food again. I did also visit a grocery store for various other things such as butter and cheese but one of my hopes this year is to find a local raw milk supplier to make some of these things at home. I notice that when I visit the grocery store I tend to spend more and purchase more processed foods. With school starting again, I should be focused on getting settled to start the school year but the muscadines are looking so fine and its almost wine making time!!
We’ve been out on the road for about 6 weeks now. In that time, I’ve kept a keen eye out for farmer’s markets and/or locally grown or produced foods. In the West and Northwest, what I’ve found is mostly locally produced meats and dairy. There are also some locally foraged products such as rhubarb and various berries. However, it has been so hard to find locally grown produce. I’ve noticed that some folks out here have green houses and most would love the opportunity to grow their own produce but the fact of the matter is the growing season is short and much would freeze even in the summer months. Groceries stores have slim pickings on produce since it must travel far while remaining fresh, which leads to high prices. Traveling always helps me to appreciate things about home and what I am finding is that we are so lucky to have long growing seasons in South Louisiana. T-Roy and I typically grow year round into the winter and we are fortunate to only have to use hoop houses during those few times temps drop below freezing. We did build a green house one year but found we rarely used it and instead focused on growing seasonal produce during cooler months. I am curious about how the Native Americans ate here in the West and Northwest and how they managed to provide for themselves besides meats. Its obvious that they had a wealth of knowledge about forage-able native plants and it saddens me that with each generation we as a people are loosing our knowledge base about native plants and animals and how to regeneratively provide for ourselves through them. The good news is that through my conversations with like-minded folks, some are seeing and acknowledging this cycle and are working towards educating themselves around these topics. What native species were relied on in the area you live? How did people of the past provide for themselves prior to groceries stores in your region?
T-Roy and I are on our regular summer vacation living like dirt bags in the backcountry of Wyoming. Every summer I bring with me a few books to read since we have no cell service and no connection to the modern world. This past week my book pick was The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I found it sitting in a box of discarded books in a classroom of a school where I teach. The book is about dust bowl people migrating to California only to find a harder life there as migrant workers. It’s a tragic story based on real American history. After finishing the book, I felt so spoiled and so far removed from real struggle. I now find myself deep in thought about the agrarian society our country was founded on and how fast that changed through the use of tractors and food industrialization in the 1930s. I have never gone hungry or come close to starving yet so many of Americans did just a century ago and many still do today. If I take one thing from The Grapes of Wrath I think it would be the importance of relationship with the land. In my travels I have a deep awe and respect of the sights I see and the cultures I observe, however, there’s a deeper connection I have with my own garden and the yard and the place that provides for my family. We are not 100% food sovereign and I don’t think that’s our goal. But something about the relationship to the land you cultivate drives deep. My thoughts are that working with it and seeing it as a living thing rather than a machine creates a healing both in the person as well as with the land. Hope you all are having a wonderful summer. We are missing our Louisiana but enjoying our time in the West.Years back, my sister-in-law, Rebecca, gifted me with a book on permaculture. Reading it was some of the best education I’ve ever come across on soils and growing food. One thing in particular was on the use of fertilizers or not to fertilize. I learned that in conventional agricultural practices, “plants often use only 10 percent of the fertilizer that’s applied and rarely more than 50%. The rest is washed into the groundwater which is why so many wells in our farmlands are polluted with toxic levels of nitrates. Applying fertilizer the way nature does with the use of organic matter uses far less fertilizer and saves energy consumed in producing, shipping and applying it. It also supports a broad assortment of soil life, which widens the base of our living pyramid and enhances rather than reduces biodiversity. In addition, plants get a balanced diet instead of being force-fed, and are more healthy. It’s well documented that plants grown in soil rich in organic matter are more disease resistant than plants in carbon-poor soil.” Learning how to build healthy soil life is key to our production of high quality food.
Hemenway, Toby. Gaia’s Garden A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2001. Soil is alive. One key to having a crop that is bursting with healthy plants, well-balanced insects, and thriving wildlife is to fill the soil with as much life as possible. The greater the number and diversity of soil organism-the more plants will be supported by the soil. In turn, an extensive array of plants will attract a copious assortment of insects, and those plants and insects will provide food and shelter for a more diverse collection of animals at the top of the pyramid. Diversity builds diversity. Vegetarians may be appalled, but much of growing and producing edible plants is actually raising animals: the tiny ones under the earth’s surface. Let’s call them “micro-herds”. Without soil life, earth just dries up and blows away, or clumps together after a rain and forms clay-bound, root-thwarting clods.
Hemenway, Toby. Gaia’s Garden A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2001. In case you haven’t noticed, this growing season has been a little drier than our typical South Louisiana wet Springs. I’ve noticed my heavy water plants, tomatoes and cucumbers, are struggling a little. No matter how much I water them, there is nothing quite like a rain, which is rich in nitrogen. It’s these seasons we must turn to our drought resistance crops like okra, peppers, corn, beans, mustards, herbs and even one of my favorites, Malabar Spinach. If you’re not familiar with Malabar Spinach, I urge you to try it. It’s easy to grow in a pot and grows like a vine. The older leaves are tougher but the younger leaves are tender and delicious. The more you pick, the more it gives. It is important that we learn to adjust each season to what nature provides. The more we force the more we lose. As always, grow, buy local and buy regenerative.
When the world is moving too fast, I often do what is easy instead of what’s right. I choose to see the small picture rather than the large. I desensitize and let it be other peoples’ problems whether it be climate change or school shootings. Nevertheless, I know that these are my problems too. Deep down, I know I must do my part in resolution. There are days I wish I had never taken on this project. The pressure of creating a drawing each week along with a post and stories from the garden are a lot on top of working full-time and managing a household and a garden. But, I am often reminded that if I numb out and don’t do my part to create change, I am the problem. So, ask yourself, what is your cause? What hard thing will you do that will contribute to the greater good? Now is a time we are all being called to do something. What if we all did it?
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AuthorIn pursuit of regenerative living practices and the dirt bag lifestyle. “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” ~ Mary Oliver. Archives
December 2023
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