I was a Country Bumpkin...

To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.
~Gandhi

It's true! I was a country girl, running wild thru the fields, getting bee-stung and nettle-stung and showering from a hose. I didn't always live in the country as a kid, but often, at least when I was young. In the autumn, my mom would pull me out of school just a week or so after it started so we could head up to the apple orchards for pickin' season. She still does – is in the Okanagan orchards right now! She goes up in the early summer for thinning season also. …though she stays home in Oregon for winter pruning season – where she tends the trees of any fruit owners smart enough to request her magic touch.

This summer, I probably emailed my mom no less than 20, 30…? times with gardening and pruning and cooking questions alone! (At least 5 times just this past week!) From how best to pit [hand-picked!] cherries, how close to trim back the grape leaves, how to can peaches (with skins or not?), when to harvest nettles… My mama's got the answer to everything earth-related. At least so far as I can tell…

I confess that I left my country life intentionally. Suddenly, the city life my dad and his new girlfriend and her three kids lived seemed so much more enticing – I could have new clothes and as much candy as I could eat! And watch movies and tv?!! So I left behind my thrift-store finds, the gardens and berries growing all around my mama's home, my girlfriends on the farm, and worst of all, my Mom. I cry just writing this. I've never thought of this pinnacle moment in quite this way before…

Over the years, as I passed {roughly} through adolescence, and finally gave up trying to "fit in" (this bumpkin never could quite figure out city folk!), it amazed me to watch how little bits of my mom's long-rejected lifestyle started to creep back in. I started making or thrifting nearly all my own clothes, cooking my own food from scratch, and growing gardens everywhere I could! Gardens? But of course! I never thought much of it, never even thought of myself as a gardener. In fact, just to prove my thoughtlessness, I didn't even do it all the time. But it was more often the case than not – almost just as a compulsion…

It wasn't until this last year, when [surprise!] I started tending my overgrown yard and planting a garden at my new house – that it really started to dawn on me what a powerful path this really is. Indeed, as I start to think of what really is important – especially as the social structures all around me are teetering – this simple act of growing our own food seems primary.

I loved reading this little bit by Starhawk recently: "With all the furor about falling markets and frozen credit, nothing real has changed in the economy. Granted, the repercussions will be that many of us have less money in our pockets and fewer opportunities. But we still have the natural resources we had a month ago. We still have our skills, our knowledge, and our productive capacity. What we’ve lost is a towering edifice of icing with no cake underneath."

When I think about it in this light, I realize I am a resource of sustainability, damn it – even of Hope! – in this day and age. And I'm lucky to live in Boulder, where the network of sustainability is growing stronger day by day. (Whether this region is ultimately sustainable is a discussion I would like to keep alive with my dear friends, far and wide!). Here we have local dairies, local farms and seedbanks, (www.eatabbo.org!!), local meat, local arts and crafts…

I could go on and on about the importance of sustainability and living local (ie, not exhausting our fossil fuels to import cheap shit that is so much more rewarding to grow/make/trade at home…). But what feels most crucial to me is the quality of Soul that I experience by growing my own food, knowing the local farmers, getting gritty under all my nails, sewing my own skirt, walking to work…

Tonight we're expecting the first frost of the season, and I spent the afternoon harvesting a bushel worth of tomatillos, the last of the zucchini (beautiful little babies with their flowers still attached made for a gourmet feast!), all the basil (saved a couple clippings to root and grow thru the winter as 'starts' for next year, but the rest went straight into pesto!), parsley, cilantro, a couple delicata squashes…

I left the pumpkin (hahaha, that rhymes with bumpkin) – it's not even orange yet, as I believe it can safely survive one frost. I also left the parsnips – they're eagerly awaiting the sweetening bite of cold – as are a couple hundred dandelion roots just waiting for the after-frost harvest!... Tonight's dinner consisted entirely (minus the olive oil and salt) of vegetables from the garden or the farmer's market. I consider this network my lifeline – both to sustainability and to sanity. And I am thankful most of all to my mom for instilling me with this most basic and sacred of sensibilities. She is a blessed soul – a powerhouse of wisdom and integrity. I aim to become more and more like her.

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RESOURCES:

If you get a chance to read this book, Animal Vegetable Miracle, it may enliven your sense of the importance (and joy!) of living local - plus, it's a fun read! Also, visit http://animalvegetablemiracle.com for bountiful links to treasurable resources such as the slow-food movement, sustainable agriculture, where to find farmers and farmer's markets around the world....

www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets – find a market in your area!

Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful and most noble employment of man.
~George Washington

"There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their neighbors. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third is by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry."
~Benjamin Franklin