Everyone should grow food.

Everyone should grow food.  Growing food is a basic task of being civilized.  Growing crops is what changed humankind from hunter-gathers to farmers.  To me its the basics of life and what connects us to the Earth. To tend and nurture a piece of earth, to encourage it produce food, while staying in harmony with earth creates a sense of peacefulness and connection to all things.  Gardening is more then growing crops.  It is what sustains us on this earth. Whether its growing vegetables, flowers or raising livestock.  We need it all to survive.  Its a basic necessity of life.

The important part of this task of growing, is working in harmony with nature.  Not trying to control it or make it into what we want, but allow it to tell us, without ‘words’ what it needs to thrive. That means we need to ‘listen’ without our ears to what its telling us.

For plants, that means looking at and seeing if the plant is thriving or just existing or struggling.  If the plant can’t move itself then it is the job of the garden steward to move it to a different location, give it different living conditions or both and watch to see if it starts thriving.   Self-seeding plants can move themselves, so watch to see if the plant moved itself from one side of the garden to the other from year to year.  Plants will thrive where they are happy.

Growing requires be connected to all things. It completes the circle of life. The animals produce manure which give nutrients to the plants and create good soil environments. The plants create food for animals (including humans).  The sun and earth connect us together.  Animals and plants need both the sun and earth to survive. We need to sustainably use all of our resources wisely to grow our Earth and our food.

When we grow food, either in the ground, in a pot or in a tower, we become reconnected to the basics of life here on the earth.  Remember that the earth is not just a ‘thing’.  It is alive and it is what gives us life. We need to nurture and continue to help it do what it does best.  Give life, give food. The Earth needs to thrive for us to survive and therefore we thrive as well.
Do your part, join the earth, grow food.