This is just a note for all of you local to the Eastern Shore of Virginia folks, reminding you to sign up for our CSA. Starting in May and continuing into September, you will receive a weekly box of seasonal vegetables, herbs, and fruit. I grow each of the vegetables from seed all the way to harvest on your table, and each box is a labor of love designed to generously feed a family of 3-4 or a couple who eats a lot of vegetables. You don't want to miss out. Shares are going fast, so sign up today!
As humans, we love to categorize, to organize everything into tidy little boxes. With these categories, we comfort ourselves in the knowledge that we have it figured out, allowing us the opportunity to move on to more important things to consider. Our brains only have a certain amount of space, so we can only devote ourselves to thinking about the truly important matters. We only have so much energy, so we have to choose what we care about. Or so we like to tell ourselves. I've written on here about the categories and trendy labeling that take place in the world of small, regenerative farming:
This need to label is not new. How we choose our words and the way we label ourselves remains vital to our identity. There's a certain comfort and security that comes with the illusion that we have it all figured out. We can breathe a bit easier, pat ourselves on the back and remain smug in the awareness that we've finally “got it.” Perhaps it's just me (I really hope it's not!) but I am constantly reevaluating, reconsidering and recalibrating my own beliefs. Sometimes based on the judgements and critiques of others but more often based on the harshest critic I know: myself. I don't like to categorize myself because I don't like to give myself or others the illusion that I have it figured out. My life is a constant striving toward something better. I want to be better and do better than yesterday. In my garden and farm this manifests itself in a number of ways but most obviously in my desire to grow better food while still giving back to the environment and in the process, healing the bit of earth I grow on. This year my garden will be perfect, with no mistakes in it yet. When I imagine what this year's garden will look like, I take a hopeful step into the future. I'm harvesting tomatoes before they're even in the ground. This year I will finally get it right and if I don't, at least I tried my damndest.
Here where I live on the Delmarva peninsula there are two categories of people: come-heres and been-heres. You likely count as a come-here whether you have lived here a few years or your whole life. Been-heres are only awarded that venerable title if you can trace your family history here on the shore going back generations, and not just a couple. And yet, once upon a time, everyone arrived from somewhere else.
When I imagine what this year's garden will look like, I take a hopeful step into the future. I'm harvesting tomatoes before they're even in the ground.
In nature, we see these binaries often pitted against each other: forest vs. field, wild vs. cultivated, weed vs. plant, invasive vs. native. Nature herself doesn't actually realize or recognize our arbitrary categories. A forest doesn't suddenly turn into a field or a meadow. The effect is far more gradual and dynamic. A forest edge, that liminal space that exists between the dark heart of a forest and an open field, is teeming with life. Quite often more life than either the forest or the field. This is the habitat you want to cultivate. It is here you discover bobwhite quail, songbirds, blackberries, wineberries, and brambles abound. This quality of abundance in transition can be found along coastal tidewaters, shorelines, and estuaries. These ecosystems walk that liminal space between land and water. Teeming with life, the soil is rich, while plants and wildlife are diverse. Here, no contradictions exist; in fact, it becomes almost harder to classify phenomena. Worlds collide, and in their union, an explosion of new life emerges.
We see Nature often cast as wild and other, while humans who choose to live close to her rhythms have historically been described as savages, pagan, and uncivilized. The puritanical drive of past centuries demanded that nature be subdued, tamed, and conquered. Pablo Picasso typified this domineering severity when he famously said, “Nature has to exist so that we may rape it.”1 This approach strikes me as self-destructive because we are each Nature ourselves. What else could you call our very skin, bones, hair, and blood? Like the animals we slaughter for food, blood also runs through our veins. The wild plants and animals we depend on for food and medicine also depend on us to harvest them responsibly. It is not in our best interest to strip nature of all her assets without any practice of reciprocity. There is no conquering or taming the natural world if you want to live in harmony with her. One day, we too will return to nature, to the earth, in a beautiful cycle. So, who is actually conquering whom?
In her book Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World, Lisa Wells writes that “this view of the non-agrarian landscape as simultaneously alien, dangerous, and untouchably beautiful unfortunately persists today among many well meaning conservationists. A view that holds us apart from true intimacy—and thus the capacity to coexist—with our own ecosystems.”2 To write off something as “wild” or “weird” or “other” is to shut ourselves off from exploring it. In an attempt to categorize, we also sterilize, and in the process, we miss the forest for the trees. Our choice of words matter: they inform how we see the world while also shaping how we interact and treat each other.
We see this same problem of narrow binary categories, if we take a step back and observe how we categorize each other. City vs. country, liberal vs. conservative, sustainable vs. unsustainable, authentic vs. fake. We dismiss country folks as rednecks or city folks as liberals, but in the process we are doing something far more damaging: with our choice of words and a swipe of our hands we are stopping any meaningful engagement or conversation to occur. Entire worlds exist beyond these artificial boundaries that we draw around ourselves and others if only we choose to engage them.
As humans we have the unfortunate problem of constant judgement and evaluation, making it even more difficult for us to simply be. Animals don't have this problem, or at least not that I'm aware of. We have encroached further and further into “nature” while also pushing out more wild territory and the animals that reside there, yet these animals don't appear to have a crisis of conscience or identity. Instead, they are forced to adapt or die. The invasive species that we complain about and try to eradicate, have we stopped to wonder why they're invasive? What practices are we contributing to that allow them to take hold? Perhaps we should ask this question before immediately trying to wipe them out and judge them as another problem to solve.
The “back to the land” movement of the sixties and seventies has reemerged in more recent years but I am not quite sure that we have a better grasp of what “back to the land” actually means. We all live on land that was once nature's and in many respects still belongs to Nature, despite our best efforts to pave and sterilize. Western culture, particularly American, values independence and individualism, placing singular importance on I, on the self.
And yet, no one can be truly independent and when we try, burnout, exhaustion and disillusionment often occur. The binaries of city dwellers vs back-to-the-landers and more generally, country vs. city puzzle me. There is a common trope that city people tend to look down on country folk as ignorant gun-toting hicks, while county people resent city slickers for their wealth, arrogance, and education. But I respect my roofer as much as I respect someone who can build magnanimous thought structures. The trouble is that we often don’t respect what we don’t use or can’t do ourselves.
As someone who grew up in the suburbs in the nineties and has lived in the city, there are definite things that I miss about living in the city. Mainly culture, art, museums, and access to amazing restaurants. I have no interest in ever living in a city again, but I love to be a tourist in cities, running away for a weekend, just a few days of museum hopping and immersing myself in culture before I retreat, quite happily satiated, exhausted, broke and overstimulated, back to my country abode freshly reminded of why I could never live in a city.
Having lived rurally for over a decade now, there is so much to appreciate about the rural lifestyle, namely, you have to learn to do a lot of things for yourself that in a city you either don't have to think about or they are simply taken care of for you. Rural living gives the illusion of independence, more so than in a city. In a city, you are quite helplessly dependent on grocery stores for food, utility companies for warmth, and amusement through any number of (quite often) expensive pursuits. And yet, those of us who choose to live rurally are also dependent, whether or not we recognize it. We depend on Nature for our sustenance, and she is a fickle overlord. But just like oil and coal, plants and animals are not an inexhaustible resource. I think the problem here can be found in the lie of sustainability and independence. No one is truly independent, and though there are certainly more sustainable and conscientious styles of living, at its core, neither city living nor country living is inherently more moral or righteous than the other. It depends on the individual. But to go even further, it depends on the community and practices that you choose to cultivate and this is only if you have the luxury of choice in the first place.
Still, I do think it is unfair to place all of the emphasis on our individual choices. In a post-industrial age with untold systemic problems underlying every choice we are forced to make, Nature, by comparison, seems considerably less capricious. Yes, she is brutal, but she confers no judgment on her brutality. A deer is simply a deer, whether or not it chooses to wander into suburbia. A sparrow is still a sparrow whether it lives in my forest edge or in the backyard of my best friend in Philadelphia. Neither has a crisis of conscience or will judge the other. This crisis is what makes us distinctly human.
How can we disrupt these systems, these norms, in small, but significant ways, while still finding joy and surviving?
And so we finally arrive at the ultimate question: in a world of infinite options, how do we choose? How do we learn to live with our decisions while not picking apart ourselves, let alone others? For me, I try to do the best I can now within my limited means. This means realizing that life, our lives, are fundamentally dependent on certain systems. How can we disrupt these systems, these norms, in small, but significant ways, while still finding joy and surviving? This is the question that drives my daily actions.
We go about our lives too overwhelmed by noise and busyness and news, always consuming, always taking. We're good at that. It's so easy. And yet, we each breathe the same air, soak in the same sun, gaze upward at the same sky, and sleep under the same moon. We share so much, not just with each other but with nature too. When was the last time you stopped and listened to the silence (or noise) surrounding you?
Today, my Monday essay just happens to fall on Earth Day, but it’s absurd because every day is Earth Day. How we treat ourselves, each other and this planet speaks worlds about us. We walk upon her, abuse her, steal from her, always extracting more and more. What can be done? At times the situation seems absolutely overwhelming and insurmountable.
I ask myself every day: What can be done in the face of so much disaster? Pessimism, worry and despair threaten our outlook, yes, but also our joy. Oh dear ones, please do not let them steal your joy, the joy each and every one of us should feel in nature, on the planet, our home. Dig deep and find the eternal optimist buried within you.
In World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal, Joanna Macy writes that “action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.”3 Mother Earth has so much healing to offer you and me, if we'd only stop and listen. So today and every day, just go outside and breathe in her air, look at the blue skies above, shake hands with a tree, inhale a flower, wiggle your toes in the grass, make tea with an herb that spoke to you, put your hands in the dirt and be still. And you just might discover that it really was the land holding and guiding and sustaining you all along. That you and nature are kin.
Climate change, climate chaos, and the mass extinction of so many species weighs heavy on my heart. The grief is all too real. And yet, farming and caring for this piece of land gives me hope. We've been on a journey together. When I first began, I knew nothing and so I listened. I enveloped myself in her silence, her songs, her laughter and slowly learned to speak her language. Once discovered and shared, together we could thrive, continuing on our journey to make this spot a haven for creatures of all kinds: animals, worms, mushrooms, songbirds, herbs and beetles. As this neglected piece of earth grew back into herself I discovered something: to give attention and honor and care to any space in nature, is to fight climate change. To honor the earth and do your part in big ways and small is all each and every one of us can do. Revolutions and worlds were made and remade by such tiny acts of courage.
Love the earth. Care for her, just as you would a member of your family.
But what can I do, you might ask?
Grow your own food
Join a community garden
Compost your kitchen scraps
Forage responsibly
Support your local farmer
Build your soil
Save seeds
Buy locally grown meat, vegetables, and fruit whenever possible
Eat less meat
Eat more local fruits and vegetables
Eat seasonally
Pick up litter
Plant trees
Plant more flowers
Support your local flower farmer
Be respectful and listen
Observe the patterns, cycles and rhythms that surround you
Give back more than you take
Teach others, especially children to love the earth and care for her creatures
Take joy in her presence
Dig your hands and toes deep into the soil because soil work is soul work. This is what it means to love the earth. And only when we learn to love her, can we hope to save her too.
Warmly xxxx
Natalie
Huffington, Picasso Creator and Destroyer (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1988), pg. 91.
Lisa Wells, Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), pg. 117.
Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2007)
"Climate change, climate chaos, and the mass extinction of so many species weighs heavy on my heart. The grief is all too real. And yet, farming and caring for this piece of land gives me hope. We've been on a journey together. When I first began, I knew nothing and so I listened. I enveloped myself in her silence, her songs, her laughter and slowly learned to speak her language." This is powerful writing with a powerful message, Natalie. And I agree with you about the problem of narrow binary categories. We label instead of understanding; we categorise instead of opening our eyes and ears.