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Featured Freedom Gardener of October 2008
Freedom Gardens: Hi AgrarianLife, congratulations! You have been selected to be the Freedom Gardener of October 2008! Tell us a little more about your garden.
AgrarianLife: In my garden it is important to grow crops and seed varieties that fulfill specific qualities such as hardiness, vitality, yield, storage. We are growing in a short season so our soil needs to be fertile and healthy to produce a year’s worth of food in four months. It is also important to me to be able to save seeds from the crops I grow, I am trying to figure out how to save seeds from chard, kale, leeks, brussels sprouts and the like. If I cannot mulch over them, or store them for six months, then I will consider substituting them with other crops.
Fulfilling our nutritional needs over winter is also a priority in my garden. For example, within our limited power system we have no budget for growing lights, and green houses or hot beds are overloaded with snow (up to 14 feet last winter), so we use sprouted seeds for fresh greens through the winter. I grew broccoli this year, not for the heads in the summer when we have so many other choices of green vegetables, but for the seeds to sprout this winter. When I find a seed variety that fits our needs, I try to continually improve it by selecting seed from the healthiest plants. I simplify where I can, keeping only the best varieties, making room and time to diversify and experiment with new crops so that I can produce as much of our needs as I can.
Each year I set new goals: this year we grew grains for the kitchen and animal feed, as well as experimental crops of hulless oats, amaranth, millet, quinoa, popcorn, poppy seed and pumpkin seed. My herb garden expands each year with culinary and medicinal herbs. Each year I take steps in expanding my knowledge as well as my practical skill. Having an intimate relationship with my food, from growing, to cooking and preserving, gives me peace of mind and a peaceful living, along with physical and mental health.
FG: Behind every garden, there must have been blood, sweat and tears. What have you felt was (is) the hardest thing you’ve faced (or are facing) in your gardening? Would you care to share a story?
AgrarianLife: Gardening began for me as a protest. The more I learned about soil erosion and mineral depletion, dependence on oil, and the use of modern slave practices in food production, the more I felt compelled to become directly responsible for what I consume. There is only so much I could boycott or buy responsibly before I wanted to learn more about being a producer. My garden is the only reliable way I have to deliver food to my family’s table without involving violence, slavery or destruction of the environment. When I put this challenge to myself four years ago, I could hardly take care of potted flowers. It has been a steep learning curve and a massive change in lifestyle for me.
Growing our food is a full time job for both my husband and I, and choosing to disengage from the wage economy has both freed our time and restricted our economic choices. We have learned to be adaptable and resourceful. Relying less on money, and more on our own resources to provide our needs makes me feel proud of our work and confident, but sometimes concerned by how intimately I depend upon the weather and climate.
Growing our grain this year has brought up strong feelings in me, looking at our harvested wheat and oats in the barn next to the hay, knowing that we had enough put away to feed the animals that feed us and provide manure for the garden, gave me a palpable sense of security, stronger than having money in the bank, especially with the recent financial mess. But the climate is perceptively changing here, making food production even harder in an already short season. My heart dropped when I wondered what we would do if we lost our grain crop next year. There are risks involved. But I feel more secure investing in soil than I do investing in property values. Investing in soil and the living ecology of our homestead is a sure thing, and will provide a buffer against crop damage from weather or pests. We are growing a diversity of crops to feed our animals and ourselves: wheat, oats, rye, millet, amaranth, peas and root crops. Where one crop fails, another thrives. It is possible that one year we will have very little wheat, but I can learn to make beautiful potato bread and oatcakes.
FG: What do you feel is the most important thing in gardening?
AgrarianLife: I approach my garden as a closed loop cycle, which means that everything must be appropriately scaled in relationship to everything else. Whenever something is out of proportion, everything else suffers. The size of the garden is dependent on the amount of manure, the number and kinds of animals are dependent on the pastures and grain we can grow, everything hinges on the energy and time we have to tend all of these things, and our energy and stamina is dependent on the quality of nutrition we receive from the food we grow. All of these things are dependent upon healthy soil, and the millions of micro-organisms in every teaspoon of garden dirt.
So far, I have been focused on learning the very practical skills of planting, cultivating, harvesting, preserving and seed saving. This winter will provide the time to research and learn about the complex relationships between minerals, nutrients and soil biota. I think the most important thing is to keep learning, always observe, take good notes, and to use our skills to continue improving the crops and soil. Our greatest human inheritance to date is our food crops, what would we be without domesticated cattle, goats and sheep, without the thousands of years of selection that produced our apple trees, grains and diverse vegetables? It is important that we carry this tradition on, to stop the erosion of this inheritance or trusting it to the hands of the few at the top, and make sure that the generations to follow receive at least a portion of the inheritence we received.
FG: Have you changed - emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually - since you’ve begun gardening?
AgrarianLife: Gardening has foundationally changed me in all of these ways. I am healthier emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. But what is more interesting is that gardening, and all that growing my own food entails, has changed the way I see the world, changed the way I relate to people, and helped me to believe that there are real ways each of us can right the wrongs we see in the world. Gardening has given me that opportunity to right some of the wrongs I see, and that very important first step has emboldened and encouraged me to continue to stand up for what is right and fair in this world.
FG: Has this website (freedomgardens.org) helped you with your garden? If so, care to share “how?”
AgrarianLife: The forum has, and I am sure will continue, to answer specific questions as well as giving me new ideas to try in my own garden and kitchen. It has also helped me to share some of my experience, which is important to me because very few people in my daily life value what I do. The forum has put me into contact with some great people, and connected me with a movement. Most importantly, the Freedom Gardens community has taught me that I am not isolated, and reinforced my belief that what I am doing, and what I am so passionate about, is relevant and has an impact on shifting our social and economic structures.
FG: Is there anything else that you would like to share with other Freedom Gardeners?
AgrarianLife: Growing our own food is hard work. It is consistent, and requires time and attention every day. It is a responsibility and a commitment, and outside of the family who sits at our tables, and fellow freedom gardeners, not many will praise or value our work.
I believe that those who benefit the most from our work are those we have never met, mostly people who live in the third and fourth world and have suffered under an exploitive economic empire. When I look for inspiration I see Congolese women trying to rebuild their war-shattered villages with a bag of seed and wooden tools, working the land with song and sweat. When I look for motivation I see the hungry faces of children everywhere, asking why we, who have more than enough, accept extreme poverty as a consequence of our demand for cheap goods. I cannot personally feed all of these children or help these women plant their seeds, but I can stop participating in the economy that deprives them of the opportunity to do the very same thing I am doing, to provide food and shelter for my family in a peaceful and dignified way. And I can participate in a new economy of sustainable communities centered around locally grown and equitably traded food.
FG: Thanks for taking the time from your busy farm life to share with us your insight, AgrarianLife! The inspiration and motivation you gather from the Congolese women and hungry children everywhere is one that each of us can take to heart, also. It’s so easy to be overwhelmed with images of war and famine and to feel helpless. And yet, like you, we should be thinking of ways to do what we can with our own lives.
Hey readers, AgrarianLife has an amazing blog and this husband and wife have been sharing their fascinating experience with growing wheat and grains on the Freedom Gardens community. Be sure to visit AgrarianLife’s profile to make a connection with this modern pioneer couple in Canada.
