Darkness, Poetry and Marbles

The darkness is moving in all around us. I awake in the dark and turn lights on as I move from room to room and ready myself for a day of work under the bank of fluorescent lights hovering over cubes within the suspended ceilings in the capital-city downtown office building. I can see the sunshine in my daily walks through the skyway system, and upon leaving work to pick my son up from his day in school. From there it is a rush against the turning of the Earth as the sun settles in the sky while we hurry home to throw a football in the yard, shoot basketballs in the neighbor’s driveway, or toss a baseball back and forth. By the time we are called in for dinner, the darkness has almost enveloped us for the night and our play will be reserved for indoor activities until an early call to peel off and go to bed.

The long days of summer are gone and the garden has been put to rest. The leaves are piled high in the compost heap and the raised beds are all covered in straw. A gopher, some rabbits and many field mice scurry amongst the beds digging holes and piling dirt and causing worry to the gardener that refuses to use poisons or chemicals in his dirt that grows so much food to sustain his family. But the garden paradise he has created that flourishes with lush green growth from May to October has also created a panacea for other critters to call home. The rabbits and the mice he can live with, but this gopher going around digging tunnels and leaving gigantic piles of excavated dirt around his garden is the source of new frustration and worry. Is it time to get a gun?

Fall and winter is the time for reflection and also a time to let the darkness settle in all around us. We can be overwhelmed with thoughts of doomsday, as the Christmas shopping season ramps up and the Salvation Army bell ringers take up positions in the skyways, outside on downtown street corners and at the entrances of big boxes everywhere. We are also given a gift of time as the summer activities end, the harvest is over, and we sit indoors with our families and ourselves driving each other crazy. It is a time to read, play guitar and to write down thoughts. Winter provides opportunity to be poetic and to appreciate our longing for summer, even as the beauty of a winter snowfall covers pine and spruce trees and leaves the bird feeders at the center of the winter ecological backyard community.

And so, my guitar has been liberated from its stand and its strings are tenderly being caressed awake by my fingers several times a week as they mindlessly pick tunes and melodies on it and search for a lost voice put away early last spring. My son plays marbles and listens, sometimes sings along, and sometimes asks me to stop to join in his marble game. From upstairs I hear my wife’s voice say, “that was pretty, whose song was that?” Usually I don’t answer, embarrassed and slightly annoyed that I have to tell her that the origin of the song is unknown and has simply come with the darkness of the season. But, I am thankful for the effortlessness of my fingers as they pluck out melodies and a rhythm while my thumb keeps pace with a steady bass line on the low strings. Somehow my mind has picked out the songs of the darkness for my fingers to translate and the rooms of the house fill with a new lightness.

As I play marbles with my son, my thoughts remain on the guitar and I hear my voice call from within. I want to go back and pick it up and sing songs I’ve learned as my fingers provide the accompaniment. But, that will have to wait as my fingers struggle with a newer skill and get thoroughly trounced by smaller and defter fingers shooting marbles along side of me.

My Green Thumb

I have had my seedling started since the middle of February and now my tomato, pepper, herb and flowers have filled two large plant stands that fill the space in front of two large sliding glass patio doors in our home. Growing plants has become a passion in my life. I am not sure how it was nurtured, but it is something I seem to have a talent for and also something I enjoy very much.

I am not sure when I first got an interest in plants. I do know that I neglected this interest for several years of my life. I have always loved outdoor places and felt at home around plants and gardens. My parents tended a garden and I spent many hours observing my mother and father till, hoe, rake and harvest our little garden plot in out backyard. As an adult, however, I never tended a garden or even took care of plants until I was well into my thirties.

I lived with a girlfriend who kept a few houseplants and I always appreciated these plants, but I did not tend to them. She also kept a stock of cut flowers on display in the rooms of our apartment. We would attend the Farmer’s Market together and admire the fresh produce. When our relationship ended, and I moved out on my own, I immediately sensed the emptiness of my new apartment. I missed the plants.

I went to Frank’s Nursery and Craft and purchased several houseplants and cacti. I bought pots and potting soil. I tended to these plants and discovered a nurturing side of myself and a need to grow things. My plants flourished. They grew huge and became centerpieces of attraction for all who came to visit a bachelor pad I shared with two roommates. Our houseplants were the envy of many female visitors to our little pad.

I had a talent for growing things. I even experimented with some seeds I had found in a purchase I had made for recreational pleasures. Again, my plants grew large, strong and powerful. My friends and I harvested more than a years supply of buds that was shared between 5-10 thirty-something bachelors. My success in growing this item was not to be repeated.

Upon moving to New York State to attend graduate school, my girlfriend, and soon to be wife, rented a small cottage in Schenectady, NY. In the small backyard I started a compost pile and made a small garden plot of vegetables and flowers. In the Front yard, I created a spot to grow the three sisters (corn, beans and squash). Growing Sweet corn right along the sidewalk in an urban area is bound to become a neighborhood attraction and conversation piece.

When we moved back to MN into a suburban home I began a backyard conversion of lawn into a large garden. Over three years I planted strawberries, red raspberries, blue berries and concord grape vines. My garden area grew from a 10 by 10 foot plot to eventually cover nearly the entire backyard which now stands at 110 by 50 foot plot. We have an apple tree and a pear tree. I created a series of raised beds and trellis to grow my plants to the heavens and save room on the ground. I mulch heavily and have a rich compost that I prepare with neighborhood discarded leaves and grass clippings, our kitchen waste, discarded plants, and added soil amendments (Sea Salt and azomite).

I have set up rain barrels in front of the four downspouts that drain the water from our roof and have four more barrels that collect the overflow. I hand water everything, but my soil holds a lot of moisture, so I don’t have to water too often. I don’t use any chemical fertilizers or herbicides and pesticides. I plant clover in the aisles between the raised beds, but welcome an occasional weed if it is not interfering with my harvested plants. Otherwise I control weeds by mulching and pulling. All of this tending the garden is full time work when I am not working for pay at my day job. It is work that I do not abhor, in fact, it is work I love doing and work that makes me understand authors like Wendell Berry and his reflections upon work.

During the height of the harvest we have over 40 blooming tomato plants, 30 some pepper plants, potatoes, garlic, onions, bush beans, pole beans, peas, carrots, lettuce, kale, swiss chard, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, herbs, squash, pumpkins, sweet corn and many other herb and flowers. Our freezer quickly fills with stored produce (fruits and veggies) and our cellar bins fill with garlic, potatoes, squash and apples. We can pickles and jellies and fill large jars with brines with other vegetables. We dry peppers, too and then settle into a long winter of preparing for the next season.

What amazes me is how easy it is to grow things, but how often I am approached by others for gardening advice. Many times I am told tales of woe about an inability to tend a garden or even to grow a plant. I have no secrets. I am perplexed by these inquires from others. I suppose I have what is called a green thumb. I care for my plants and they grow. It’s as simple as that. I don’t neglect them. I watch their growth from seed to bloom/fruit and grow right along side of them. I don’t miss a step along the way, because I am excited for their growth as they appear to be. As much as I nourish them, they nourish me. I suppose that’s the secret to a green thumb as much as anything.

Fall, Grief and Despair

I still have potatoes, broccoli and kale left to harvest in the garden. Soon, I must begin applying compost and mulch to prepare the soil for next spring and plant the garden along with other fall plantings of flowers and herbs.

Fall always arrives in a rush and I, as usual, am unprepared for the wave of hopelessness that overcomes me. The tomatoes, peppers, beans, flowers, and the lush colors of the summer suddenly give way to browns and decay leaving one in a general state of despair. Luckily, this feeling is only temporary and can be assuaged through the hard work of preparing the garden in anticipation of the following spring when the plants will once again begin to sprout and grow to full bloom. There is also the work in the kitchen of preparing and storing the harvest from the summer and fall. It is a time to grow closer to family and community.

I, like many people living in suburban communities, feel a disconnect with my neighbors. I am treated as a sort of oddity by my neighbors. They arrive in amazement during the summer to witness the bounty I have managed to grow, but seem puzzled by my efforts and slightly taken aback in wonderment over my motivations. Am I a survivalist, hippie, malcontent, liberal, conservative? All these questions seem to be forming in the backs of their mind as they make comments on the amount of work and time my efforts must consume.

Fall is a time for reflection and with the wave of hopelessness that accompanies the end of the harvest, one can be overwhelmed with grief. I don’t see a need to run from this grief or feel a need to medicate it. Rather, I let it flow through my veins and contemplate the loss I am experiencing with the fall while being aware of loss and death in the world that surrounds me. Life and death go hand in hand and the experience of fall should prepare us for our own deaths and help us learn to live with our mortality.

As someone who follows and sometimes obsesses over political and global events, fall can amplify the hopelessness of our times. But, it is only by experiencing the despair and working through the misery that accompanies the life cycle that we can retain our sense of hope and put it to use to build a more sustainable world beginning with our own lives. But, we are a society that treats depression and grief as a disease rather than a perfectly natural response to our changing conditions. Rather than experience this grief we medicate and dull it so we can forget about it. But nothing we do can erase the fact that we are all mortal and our death stalks us every moment of our lives.

What many of us do not realize is that medicating and forgetting about our inevitable death may prolong our lives and keep the physical body alive, but it creates a spiritual emptiness. Most of us spend the majority of our waking moments in a trance that might as well be death for the experience it gives us. Our lives are not killing us, our lives are already dead. This is why we must experience grief, taste it and glorify it. That is what fall reminds me, anyway.

Sell out.

There was a term we used for bands that had gained commercial appeal by sacrificing their integrity. It was something we all realized was necessary to some degree, but some bands managed to pull it off more gracefully than others. For a local scene, if a band made the transition to a more national audience, there was no greater scorn than for a band that sold out.

What exactly does it mean to sell out?

In our society today, everything is measured by price. The only recognized value is price. Even our time has a price on it - time is money. Some people's time is worth more than others. My time is not worth quite as much as my bosses, but more than our office secretary. Yet, intuitively, we all know that some things in life our priceless. We sell our time to pursue some things that cannot be valued in a marketplace. Eight hours a day, five days a week buys us a few precious hours a week for such pursuits if we can make all of our payments necessary to maintain our lifestyles. Sometimes we dream about combining our priceless pursuits with our work. We think about making our hobbies into profit-making adventures. What would it take to profit off of our hobbies?

Selling out, of course.

This is the dilemma. As many jobs I have had, I have also had hobbies, dreams or goals. Each time my hobby has run up against the market, it has evaporated into a fine mist and blown away with the wind. For anything to have integrity and value that is long lasting it has to be motivated by something close to the heart and not by what can be obtained in the market.

This does not mean that anything that has sold for a price in the market is automatically crap and of no value. There are many examples of successful artists who have made a good living off of their art. However, their chosen craft would still be the same whether they made money or not off of it - for they are motivated by something that comes from within.

Right now I garden when I am not working. Someday I would like to farm, but this notion of value and markets has me worried. I can see what happens to farmers and the economics of agriculture. There is an incentive to get into organic farming because right now there is a large demand for organic products. Walmart, Target, Sam's club and many other retail stores are devoting several aisles to organic products. However, farmers should never forget that these outlets and buyers of their production are forever in search of selling at the lowest price to their consumers and generating profits for their shareholders. When agricultural products are in large supply, the market place will lower the price. Eventually, the market for organic products will bottom out and farmers will get lower and lower prices for their ever-increasing yields.

The temptation to produce one crop on a farm is huge. Even local organic farms selling their produce at Farmers Markets are in search of products that will sell. If a farmer just follows the seasons and sells only what is in season, they will always have competition from other area farms and the price for their products will be driven down. Everyone loves tomato season, but it is the farmer that brings the first tomatoes to market that gets the highest prices. Tomatoes in the fall are going to sell for much less. So, one farmer begins growing tomatoes in January in a greenhouse, so they have ripe tomatoes in May or June. Soon everyone has a greenhouse and is selling tomatoes in June. This is wonderful for tomato lovers, but works contrary to what the farmer seeks - high prices.

This is where farming for the love of farming comes in. The first priority of the gifted farmer is producing good food to eat, while taking care of the soil and land. The wonderful thing about farming and gardening is that cornucopias amounts of produce are generated during the season. It is an awesome task to put all the tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, garlic, onions, etc. to good use before it spoils and must be returned to the compost heap. The kitchen is filled with activity this time of the year - cooking, canning, freezing and fermenting. The same goes for dairy, meat and poultry production. What throws all this out of balance is when the farm is devoted to the market and yields of selected crops are emphasized over more diversified production using holistic practices. Of course, farms require land and land costs money that often necessitates debt owed to banks that only care about the profits of the farm. What this means for me is that I can't think of farming as a livelihood, but must instead devote my energies to a garden that produces vegetables and fruits for seasonal consumption of my family and friends. An expanding garden can never come at the expense of "selling out," or the next in my line of hobbies will dissipate into thin air.

Blueberries and Family

My wife, son and I woke up Saturday morning and drove to a farm in Western Wisconsin to pick Blueberries. We were there for two hours and picked 15 lbs (and probably ate a lb or two more). If you haven't had this experience as a family, I suggest you set aside some time soon to go berry picking. My son had a wonderful time and was chattering away about all the berries he was finding and eating. He was so proud of his harvest he was gathering and was in no hurry to leave when we had our fill.

Speaking of Faith

I had a long and fulfilling day in the Garden yesterday. There were weeds to be pulled, composts to be turned, fruits and vegetables to be harvested, second round of plants to be planted, and organic fertilizer to be applied. I woke of this morning sore, but completely refreshed.

Sundays are a great day for gardening. I don't belong to an organized church, so my spiritual time could not be better spent than working with soil and plants. Often, I will set up the radio and turn it to a baseball game - the Minnesota Twins - since Sundays usually mean a day game. Yesterday the Twins lost to the California Angels, 7 -2, but not even this could spoil my mood.

After the game I turned the radio to NPR and tuned into Barbara Kingsolver being interviewed on Speaking of Faith. The segment was called The Ethics of Eating. Kingsolver and her family went one year with trying to raise all the food necessary for their living on their own property. THey supplemented what they could raise with trips to the local Farmers Markets and, if they had to, purchases of organic food from the grocery store. What they were attempting to accomplish was to live off of food that was raised in or near their locality and not support our international corporate food supply. She made several interesting points about questions people don't ask about where our food comes from.

Of course, all of this is just confirmation of my own views and was perfectly accommodating to my afternoon spent in the garden. I share similar goals to Kingsolver and have to echo her statement that purchasing your food locality and tending a garden has benefits that go beyond financial and is not that hard to do. It is a choice available to us all that has many spiritual and ethical benefits.

Berries and breakfast

Every morning I pick a few raspberries for my morning breakfast out of two bushes I planted last year. I planted 5 more red raspberry and 5 black raspberry bushes this year which should start producing well next year. I also have a fairly large strawberry patch and I plan on making space in the garden for a row of blueberry bushes also. I purchase frozen berries for my breakfast all year round. I would love to produce enough berries in my garden during the summer berry season to supply my berry fix for the entire year.

Here is my mornign breakfast.

handful of frozen organic blueberries
handful of frozen Org raspberries
handful of frozen Org strawberries
one banana sliced
2 heaping teaspoons of Wheat germ
2 heaping teaspoons of ground flax seed
1 teaspoon of bee pollen
covered with 1/2 to 1 cup of Muesli (Bobs Red Mill usually)
pour plain Organic vanilla Yogurt over and mix all ingerdients in large ceral bowl

Add a little soy milk and let sit while I drink cup of coffee and read paper, then shit(this high grain breakfast keeps me very regular), shave and shower (Usually about 45 minutes to an hour). Mix again and eat.

This is a filling and very nutritiousway to start the day providing an energy boost for almost the entire work day. I usually drink tea at work, have a light sandwich at lunch and come home to a large salad (out of the garden fro 6-8 months a year) and hearty dinner.

My goal is to be self-sufficient on the berries within a year or two.

Why I am a Luddite?

I promised to answer this question in a post last month. Well, Wendell Berry offers a pretty good explanation.

I rely on technology to navigate in this world. I am fully indoctrinated into American culture with a Masters degree in Economics. I can find my way around the computer quite well without being information systems technician. I know just enough to stay employed in this pecuniary economy.

It is my belief that most of the people I encounter everyday are not happy in their roles each one plays in this same economy. We each feel something is missing or we should be doing something else. Out connection to each other via electronic media, cell phones and text messaging leaves all of us feeling incomplete. I believe the primary component missing in our lives is a connection to place and community - culture. Contrary to the diversity specialists and multi-cultural advocates, culture is not tied to self-esteem or an individual's identity. Culture is attached to place and when we can buy culture through the mail and identify with images we see on television or on our computer, we lose a connection to our community and history. This loss is much greater than most people realize, for without this history we cannot function as citizens. We are no longer responsible for a place and neighborhood, but are rather concerned only with ourselves and our families. To be successful is to be mobile and if the community surrounds us is in danger of collapse, the successful ones will move their families to a new community. This lack of responsibility to a place is what is driving America to forget its glorious past and focus instead on its perilous future and each of our escapes.

All of this is driven by our new technologies and the only way to salvage our past is to begin taking care of a piece of land, however small at the expense of a pension, insurance, mobility, pecuniary gain. All wealth derives from material resources. The pecuniary wealth holders among the professional classes hold on the wealth is precarious at best as our collapsing housing market currently foreshadows. Buying and holding property cannot bring a return on an investment that is subject to exponential laws, unless it becomes speculative. However, these returns do not increase the real value of the land. Only stewardship and community building can raise the real return on the land.

The real return comes with a sense of place that is received from becoming part of a social network that depends on this place for its survival. We no longer have many places left in the US that are locally dependent as we rely more and more upon foreign imports of inferior products. These products are not inferior because they are produced by an inferior foreign people, but rather because they are not produced with care. They are produced with only one goal in mind -- profit. A local producer cares about what happens to the products he or she sells within the community because these products reflect on his or her reputation in the community. Multi-national global corporations have no such cares, outside of how they effect their bottm-lines. All this brings me back to the only permanent solution to the disease that infects our global culture, for lack of a better term describing our current condition.

We must place an emphasis on community and our local environments over technological advancements. Any technology that breaks apart a local community or harms a local habitat, should be restricted if not banned. Without such restrictions, we will continue down the path of individual pursuits of financial rewards at the expense of everything that is necessary for the pursuit of human freedoms and dignity in each of our lives.

My Niece Olivia

taking a stroll through my garden last year. I don't have any recent photos for my garden this year, yet.

My Cronies

I think I am an example of a person that is mentally healthy. Oh, I get depressed sometimes. And, sometimes I get angry. And, sometimes, I am just plain bored (like here at work - I'd rather be home in my garden). But, I take care of myself.

I think a lot of the mental health issues that we suffer from in our country are caused by our lifestyles and environments. Most of us do not lead productive lives. Our jobs are the source of despair for a lot of us. It takes away from the time we should be spending developing relationships with people who are close to us and also working on our souls.

So, how do I do it? I have to work and my job is as spiritually meaningless as any other job out there.

1. First off, I value my time away from work highly and I don't spend it chasing mindless entertainment such as is shown on TV. I will watch an occasional sporting event (I love baseball, basketball and high levels of competition in many other sporting events), but I never schedule time around a television show.

2. I don't spend anytime on the computer, except at work. I was hooked up to the Internet at home in the past, but I found myself on endless searches for information and engaged in endless dialogue with people I have never met. I am too embarrassed to mention my time wasted playing games, nor the day my wife discovered the filthy names of the adult websites during history search on my computer. Needless to say, removing the computer from my house has been a blessing.

3. I don't own a cell phone. I don't have call waiting. I would toss away the answering machine if my wife would let me. There are times when people should not be able to get a hold of you.

4. I eat nutritious and healthy food. Some day I will do a post on my diet. I am sure you will be thrilled.

5. I have very time consuming hobbies that are spiritually rewarding and nuture that part of me that many refer to as my soul: gardening, writing, playing guitar.

6. My cronies.

My cronies are extremely important to me. I probably should not be one to write a self-help book because many of the things my cronies and I do are not considered good for building positive mental health. Actually, some of the things we do are considered harmful to it. I am involved with a group of friend whom I have known for many years. We get together several times a year to either do a hiking/camping trip or just crash at one or the others floor/couch. We refer to ourselves as The Fools which is short for Drummingfools, the official name of our little tribe of 8-12 friends depending on the time we get together.

Our trips usually consist of hiking long distances carrying drums and other percussion insturments, alcohol, camping gear, clothes and food on our backs with 3 - 7 canine companions. We usually have several nights of drunken drum jams deep in the woods and days of smoking cannibus and relaxing in natural pools and waterfalls in the many rivers along the North Shore of Lake Superior in Northern Minnesota. Give me a a weekend of such activities and I can promise you, I and my foolish brethren will all be spiritually refreshed and ready to face the work-world. A week long hike is like a vision quest and a true awakening of the senses.

That is how I stay mentally, emotionally and spiritually on top of my game. Not with prescribed anti-depressants, but just a short time of excessive drinking a few tokes of the fareye and the comradarie of my cronies is all that is needed to do the trick.

Water Pistol Man

Water pistol man full of ammunition,
Putting out fires on a world wide mission,
Did you ever stop to squirt the flowers in your own backyard?
--Michael Franti

I used to care. I mean I thought a lot about politics and what I should do personally to make the world a better place. I was far from perfect -- I'm American and I love my conveniences, and I rely upon fossil fuels, and I don't do enough to stop wars around the world that we support with our money and our lifestyles. I see an unjust world and I've felt wrong about it and my part in it for a long time.

I suppose that is what made me a liberal. I would listen to talk radio and get angry. So many people calling in on their cellphones while driving in their SUVs or big trucks to complain about liberals for caring about the state of the world and raising their taxes. As angry as I was, I could never match their contempt for those they called liberals. And there I was, a bleeding heart liberal who cared about people dying around the world in our name and about the environmental havoc we were wreaking on our world.

Now, we are in a war in Iraq. The Democrats are in control in congress and we were suppose to be making progress in bringing our troops home. There was a lot of hope in the air in November 2006. What we have instead is an increase in the number of troops and a further escalation of the War. What should be obvious to us is that we have no intention of leaving Iraq and letting Iraqis decide what should be done with their oil. The number one benchmark is that the Iraqi Parliament must pass the oil law allowing foreign ownership of their oil. We are doing the multinationals biddings in this war. As usual, it is all about profit and these profits put our congresspeople into their positions and promise to keep them there as long as they continue to do the bidding of the primary wealth holders of the world. So, we are not leaving Iraq anytime soon. We will have a presence there until the oil is gone. We might not call it an occupation at some point in the future, but the Iraqi people will suffer under our influence and for our lifestyles for many years to come. So, Why am I not part of the Netroots working the channels for change, naively campaigning for the democrats to defund the war, or marching on Washington all by my lonesome intent upon attaining change.

Because I no longer care. I cannot keep caring for the lives of others around the world. I only have a water pistol and I cannot put out all the fires - let alone one of them. So, now, I grow a garden and I don't own a cellphone and I'm not hooked up to cable and I drive a Toyota Echo. I know, I am still, plenty plugged into the system. I have my job to pay back debt through student loans. I still use gasoline and buy it cheap when you consider the lives lost to get that oil to America. I have way more stuff than any one person needs. But, slowly I am unplugging myself from the pecuniary economy. I am not going to rely upon experts to tell me how to feel or how to vote for different initiatives around the world. I only see a small part of the world and I know how I can make that small part a better place for me, my family and the surrounding community which remains small in comparison to the global world we think about today that has not gotten one bit smaller despite the technological innovations we have today. I can grow my garden and reduce the amount of fuel for the transportation of food around the world. I don't use chemical fertilizers or pesticides. I don't watch the news anymore and I read the papers with the eyes of a skeptic.

Some experts accuse my withdrawal from the political realms of the antiwar voices as a sign of apathy that ends up contributing to the war effort. And other experts accuse the antiwar voices as giving hope to the enemies in Iraq and endangering the lives of our soldiers. I am tired of listening to either side. I don't want to be a part of it anymore. I am going to reduce my footprint on the world and stop supporting the corporations and the financial wealth holders who profit off of the killing. I am not going to listen to the opinions of experts informing of conditions at locations on the planet that are far removed from my community. The world will be a better place when we trust that local communities around the world know how best to use their local resources for the benefit of their local community. I became interested in economics because I believed that money would explain a lot about the forces that guide policy in America. I still believe that and any advice that suggests following the money is good advice.

But Real wealth is not money. Wealth is influence and the control over resources. Wealth is synonymous with power. And we allow a few people to have power over us by giving them influence and letting the idea of money and our financial security be the prime motivator for our lives. Somehow we have to take back that power. If I can (or if you can) take back the control over the food you put into your body, I and anyone else, takes the first step toward redistributing wealth in this country. Redistributing wealth through Democratic initiatives won't solve the underlying problems in our society. Instead, we have to take back the land from the corporations and grow our own food in ways that are environmentally and ecologically sound. We can do this by taking care of a piece of land we own that is under our care. A garden is the first step.

The Garden

I remember a campaign as a kid that was put out by the FDA and the nutritional requirements we were suppose to be getting. The marketing line was You Are What You Eat. As a smart-ass kid, this line was utterly meaningless to me. I was an apple, a burger, carrots? What the hell?

I used to eat everything. As a youth, I could not put on weight and I was always hungry. I graduated from high school weighing 135 lbs carried on a 6' 2" frame. I was skinny. I am still tall and lean, but carry a modest 195 lbs on this lean frame today. My eating habits were not the greatest as a youth, but I supplemented all the soda pops, ice cream and junk foods with nutritious food as well. I also ate my share of fast food.

I didn't begin growing my garden as a health kick. I just wanted to tend a little plot of earth. I started going to Farmer's markets and I took an interest in agriculture and our agricultural and food system in the US. Slowly, I started to realize that I was made up of what I put into my body and I became much more conscious of what I ate. I now grow a lot of vegetables, berries and flowers in a garden that is about 120 ft x 80 ft. I don't use chemicals and I have great success and yields from meticulous composting, weeding, soil-building and mulching. I have raised beds that I place plants close together and grow all my vining plants upwards (tomatoes, cucumbers, melons and squash). I grow clover in the paths between the beds and come July and August, my garden becomes transformed into an oasis where I go to sit amongst plants, flowers and greenery with a cold beer and the radio tuned to a Minnesota Twins baseball game or Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion.

Now, I only eat food that I have some idea of where it comes from and how it has been raised or grown. I feel healthy and strong. My plan is to work at my job for as long as it takes to take my hobby of gardening and transforming it into a business as a small farm or Community Supported Agriculture. I am in the process of looking for land to start my organic farm and business around the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. I want to raise chickens, beef cattle, dairy cattle, hogs, goats, and sheep and grow every variety of vegetables you can imagine. That is my goal. I want to be a farmer. But, for now, I am happy in my garden. Soon, I will post some pictures of my garden paradise and the fruits of my labors.