Growing food is about more than farming. It is about community self-reliance. It is about challenging capitalism. It is about our freedom.
People tell me all the time that they love what I’m doing, but they’re not that into farming themselves. I get it. This is hard work, it’s often solitary, and it takes a lot of repetitive attention to fine detail.
But it’s also so much more than that.
It is reciprocity with the earth. It is taking care of the land that feeds us by feeding it the compost it loves. It’s protecting the forests that hold the rain, and thanking earth mama every time we pour slick, wet water down our dry, hot throats. It’s listening with awe in a field of bees and mustard flowers.
It is collective power. It is knowing we sustain each other — and therefore depend less on state and corporate institutions to meet our needs. And when we make demands on power, we can do it from the firm ground of knowing we’re already modeling the change we champion. We are collective care, we are resilience. That’s what I’m learning from this incredibly organized community I’m working with.
It is the fine-detail work of tending gently and firmly to plant life. Tying them to bamboo poles and pruning their rotted leaves. It is the kind of quiet work that is dharma practice. Stillness that encourages tending gently to my mind and the many ego thoughts it produces, while firmly choosing not to get hooked by them.
It is living on planetary time. Our days tick along the living clock as we follow the sun’s light to work and listen to our bodies to rest. It is feeling time through our bodies. It is seeing time play out above as the planets weave their way through the sky. As I plan for the coming seasons + years, I am following not just the calendar’s count, but moving in parallel motion with the planets.
It is embodying the ancient, instinctive wisdom of being in relationship with the All — each other and the nature that runs through all of us. In this way, we feed the people the kind of food that nourishes not only the body, but also the spirit.
This is my life as a farmer-astrologer. This is living on the land.