A Matter of Community

     As my third year's garden comes to a close (only sweet potatoes and one pumpkin high in the weeds, remain...curious the color of these crops to the theme of the season is it not? And all this time I thought Cracker Barrel invented October color themes.) I find myself pausing to reflect once again on all I've learned, and all I'm still learning. I'm pause to weigh what to retain, what to chalk up to experience...And while there is much to process, one theme stands clear: Gardens are not a one person sport, instead, to grow one properly it takes a family if not a village.
     For this reason, and for the next chapter of my life, I am committed to studying those who've discovered just that (i.e. the value of gardens to community and communities to gardens) for it is my fervent belief that the future of our planet will derive from some working formula thereof.
     Visit the moors and villages of Northern England and you see this in play everyday...folks coming together, working common plots, in the school yards and church yards of their villages...In those hours their working jobs will allow, their gardens lay side by side in common plots. In addition to looking quite charming, it's really very resourceful and I've no doubt, very healing.
     But you don't have to jump across the pond to see this sort of thing. Our own country is catching the wave. Many in our own country have been doing this for years, (folks like Steve and Ina Mae Gaskin's "Farm" come to mind; I also think of family I hold dear that lived years of their young married life in a community south of Chicago called "Stelle")
     Lifestyles committed to sustainable living, renewable resources, revering the planet are to me,  lifestyles worth studying, and to those who might scoff at my green, tree-hugging bias, may I simply say that having studied many types of people over the years, with lifestyles ranging from the political high and mighty to the rich and famous to the starving artist, my gardening heroes, these people of the soil exemplify to me, a good and decent, honorable way to live. They are comfortable in their own skin. Their insides match their outsides. They are (as the scripture describes) salt of the earth.
     For that reason (starting now, as my own garden loosens her tethers on me) I begin the next chapter of my journey, which is to study those who've been doing it already...I want to know what they've learned...glean what they've gleaned. To capture (as I have been blessed to study and capture from my own farming mentor, Thurman) those lessons that were years if not lifetimes in the making by others alongside them, living in community centered around the sacred theme of garden. To me it feels a good and worthy investment of my time, for some day I would like to provide others the same if it means they would consider for their own lives such notions as permaculture and all things life supporting.
     More and more each day, these are the people and ideas that capture my fascination, but transcending all this, to be perfectly honest, the real fruit of this labor is that of discovering a peaceful, more gentle way of living.