It has been a few months since I’ve sent anything out from this space. The truth is that I find it hard to articulate anything when the hits just keep coming from the larger world. While I work on the farm each day I process my confusion, grief, and rage about racial violence, bodily violence and earth destruction. At the same time I am tethered to my extreme delight in my kids, my family and friends, and the joy of connecting with this beautiful planet. Both are big. I find that while I’m processing I just don’t have a lot to say. Everything gets confusing and I feel what I now refer to as “bouncy house brain” where all the thoughts and ideas bounce around all day until I am ready to change everything about my life, strike out on a new and better path to change the world! I must doing something wrong in my life if all of this hardship in the world still exists.
But over the days and weeks of doing the work it takes to grow the plants who make the seeds I re-grounded into the deep importance of seed work. It took hearing words from my mentors through books, podcasts, and re-reading the thoughts and convictions of my seed Sheros to bring me back from “bouncy house brain”. To remember that no matter what happens, people and insects and hummingbirds and butterflies and all of the life that depends on a garden, this garden, need seeds and plants and flowers to exist in the future. Being part of this lifecycle is an honor.
Also, the plants themselves remind me of the need to stay in this work. This cold Spring has not been kind to my tomato crop. I got early blight for the first time ever. But pruning the tomatoes last week I found the first ripe fruit- a beautiful Stupice tomato growing on a plant that came from a seed saved for several generations here on the farm. These seeds are alive and they are adapting before my eyes to bring fruit in this sometimes wet and cold, sometimes hot and dry world they live in less than 50 feet from my home. And I am grateful.
Don’t get me wrong, I will always be looking for opportunities to use and raise my voice. These complex systems of oppression need to be worn away by the fierce power and the strong wind of our collective action. At the same time, growing seeds for others to plant in their gardens and farms is part of creating the world I want to live in and leave behind for future generations. And the garden is the best place for me to work out the “bouncy house brain” and come back home so I won’t be changing everything about my life just yet!
If you are curious about the importance, the cycles and the how-to’s of seed saving, I am offering two Seed Saving workshops in the coming months. Both contain a presentation of the foundational elements of seed work. The botany, the plant relationships and the interconnected ecology of beings that make it all work. Then there will be a hands-on element where we go into the garden and harvest seeds. If you are interested please follow the link to the workshops and events page https://www.wilddreamsfarm.org/workshops-and-events and sign up! I’d love to host you. Lunch and a farm tour are included.
