Captivated by Rot

Last summer I was thinking about the parable of the 4 soils, found in Matthew 13. It makes clear that God’s word is not readily acceptable to everyone all the time, but instead can only be received by those with the right “soil.” Understanding, then, that I could receive God’s word only if my heart were of the right conditions, I began to pray that it would be so.

A year later, I had become a gardener. I had spent months learning the pillars of wisdom for caring for plants and putting them into practice. One of these pillars—perhaps the most important, in fact—is the soil. The state of the soil will determine the ability of seeds to sprout, the depth to which their roots can grow, and the amount of nutrients available to help them grow strong. Healthy soil should be dark, meaning it is nutrient-rich; it should be loose but not sandy so as to let the right amount of water pass through.

One of the things that surprised me as I learned about soil is that it can be improved, changed, built. It’s not something that happens instantaneously, but it can be done. Where there are rocks and weeds, they can be removed with some labor. Harder to change is what is called the structure of the soil. This is, essentially, like it sounds; it refers to what makes up the soil and how much space is between its parts. The trick to obtaining healthy soil structure is to add organic matter. That’s fancy-speak for dead stuff: dead leaves, dead grass, manures, and rotted-down plants or food all will do the trick. A letter-writer named W.C. quoted in Wendell Berry’s book The Unsettling of America sums it up nicely: “Yes, rot is the word. Rot means death, and without death and rot there can be no new life.”

Somehow, in the context of nature—gardens, forests, oceans—the idea of death turning to life makes good sense. Nothing is wasted that is in the cycle of nature, because death really does feed life. The rind of my butternut squash and the cores of the boxful of apples will rot all year in a pile. They’ll begin as nice, everyday versions of scraps, but soon turn into slimy, smelly versions of themselves. From there they will rot until they’re no longer recognizable, but have all broken down into a bunch of near-black bits. And then, they’ll be turned into the soil of the garden and make food and space for the broccoli or tomatoes that will grow there, which will eventually feed me, my roommates, our friends, and strangers.

A few nights ago I was lying in bed, lights out, having just read a journal entry from a few months after my mom had passed away four years ago. I think I was thanking God for the ways that he has used that grief and hardship in the years since. Then, in a moment, something clicked into place, and I understood that the truth of good soil in the physical is truth in the heart, too. I began to remember different kinds of death that have, in their way, rotted and stunk, and slowly disintegrated into the substance of my past. Those things have made my character what it is now.

And I laughed out loud, lying in bed in the dark, because I realized that the decisions that are so difficult today, and the ways that I am laying down things that I want because God is asking me to, are building really good soil in my heart. As the years go by, as I continue to make sacrifices, I will become of rich and meaty character like the best of soils, and the things that God speaks to me will grow strong and mighty because I receive them. There is no need to worry, then, because what he plants is good.

Putting a trend to the test

To those who are in tune with current trends in our culture, it’s not much of a surprise to hear that we are interested in local and organic food, in making things from scratch, and in all manner of time-sucking interests and practices that were, for the most part, not taught to us when we were children. Examples are many and readily available: the surge of interest in “artisanal” ice cream, the addition of the nearly meaningless term “natural” on food containers, and the commonality of the reusable shopping bag.

Although I’ve been distinctly inclined to the from-scratch mentality since I started shopping for my own groceries as a sophomore in college, part of me has hesitated to fully throw myself into my relatively new interest in gardening because I fear that I am being unduly influenced by a trend. Let’s face it: I have enough trouble embracing fashion fads, which are of relatively low cost in money or time. So putting oodles of time and money and heart into something that’s going to pass soon, which I’ll look back on with pity for my impressionability, is not something I want to do.

Nonetheless, at each new step of involvement in this vein of things, I discover in myself new passion, the kind of which I had nearly thought myself incapable. Yet, I am finding that I hold convictions of absolute good and bad, beneficial and harmful, when it comes to the mainstream modern lifestyle, especially as it pertains to food and land production. I’m not usually a super-opinionated person, so this has been interesting. But then, everything about this complex of living holistically (gardening for food, food from scratch, community and physical health in it all) keeps on making sense.

About a month ago, I decided to resign myself to the fact that I really care about this stuff and start truly learning about it—not just in the current, trendy practices, but also in its history and deeper ramifications on our society. To begin my education, I turned to Wendell Berry, a fellow completely unknown to me just months ago. I discovered him not in the form of his many zealous essays, but in a thin tome of poetry called Sabbaths, which are the reflections of Mr. Berry as a farmer, thinker, and writer, on Sabbath days over the course of several years. I was captivated by these poems because they reflected the things that I love about nature, wild and tamed.

Poems are a bit ethereal, though, and so after finishing the volume, I ordered the first book of essays Mr. Berry wrote about agriculture, entitled The Unsettling of America. Thus far (I’m about half-way through it), the book focuses largely on the shifts in agricultural practices and policies in the first three quarters of the twentieth century (it was published in 1977). Reading this book has been a bit uncanny; it’s one of those rare scenarios where you read something and you find that it at once articulates beliefs you hold but have never expressed, and fills in the gaps of your own knowledge of the causes and effects of these beliefs.

Some friends and me have been learning, over the summer, about the power of questions. “Questions,” said my friend Linnea, “are creative.” We find that, as we learn to look carefully at our lives and our culture, we can ask how and why things are as they are. Why did we grow up in suburban homes, eating (in my case) meals out of boxes and bags? How did farming become so big-business? What are the effects of that on our everyday lives, the way we live, our health? Have these things been beneficial to us?

It’s a scary thing to question, to make a habit of questioning. I’m only beginning to learn. And yet it has beautiful gifts to offer. When I question, I find out what I believe, what I know, and what I don’t know. Laying down the prideful assumption that I know it all or even can discover all, I learn to see things that before were invisible to me. I also become more comfortable with mystery. Guided by questions, life can be more intentional, and hence more impacting, because as questions are raised, and answers are found or attempted, new paths can be forged into uncharted territory.

So it is that I’m beginning to ask questions about land, food, health, and communities. Maybe it’s the asking of the questions that can distinguish a fad-follower from a true believer.

Life, Mind and Garden Abuzz

We are, at this moment, getting slimed by a furious thunderstorm, slap-dab in the middle of a Sunday morning. The past 2 weeks have given us lots of rain.

Classic images of farmers will tell you that rain is good. I think of rain sometimes along with an image of a leather-faced farmer looking up to the sky, straw hat tipped upwards, along with eyebrows knit in concentrated hope. While our culture is on the whole disconnected from this reality, it remains a reality nonetheless that rain brings life.

And life abundantly. Two days ago I went to check on my garden, after taking a blissful break for a week while the rains came down. Again, absence made the growth more apparent; I was surprised that the vines had nearly carpeted the whole patch. The baby butternut squashes, barely existent the week before, had doubled in size. The greatest surprise waited in the summer squash bush, like an obese child playing hide-and-go-seek behind a lamppost. One squash lay, brilliant yellow, warty and swollen, nested in the arms of the plant. It was about two-thirds the length of my arm.

Greater shock yet remained. I pushed aside the furrily-spikey leaves of the zucchini plant to see whether it had yet decided to produce fruit. Bees and beetles buzzed beneath its canopy, and yellow flowers continued to unfurl daintily. Don’t be fooled by these fairy-like images, though. Because underneath at all, I finally discovered an ogre of a zucchini, stretched out and snoozing, camouflaged dark green under the plant. Uttering expletives of surprise, I pulled the thing off its vine (after photographing it, duh!), feeling it drool juice from this new wound out onto my fingers. It was heavy, several pounds, and the size of my lower leg. There was another, just inches shorter and ounces lighter.

Meanwhile, there are other fruits and vegetables in excess all over town. There’s a crabapple tree I know of that’s nearly ready to be shaken and freed of its rosy-green fruit, as well as a tree dripping with purple-gray plums outside the café where I work. I could be a full-time homesteader right now—picking, cutting, pitting, peeling, baking, freezing, drying, canning. There’s more around, and available for little to no cost, than we have time to prepare or put away.

This makes me wonder: Why seasons? Think about the contrast.

Now, it is summer. Color abounds, in landscape and in diet. Flowers cut from gardens (even from vacant lots, for the imaginative) endlessly adorn our tables. Our meals are stuffed with fruit of the land. First come the strawberries, followed by blueberries and melons. Beans, beets, broccoli, greens, peppers. And the corn—fresh and tender, exploding sweetness into the mouth. Fuzzy peaches, bumpy squash, plump cherries. One can be bored neither by the cuisine nor the activities of living, for the sun allows us to be out at all hours. Then there is the preservation of all things edible, which once occupied the summers of those on this land. This allowed not only for the nourishment of the body in times of scarcity, but also for variety in dullness. How sweet, lovely, and precious is a jar of homemade jam in the depths of winter, when we are just dying to see real, deep reds or blues on our plates! These things maintain the memory of warmer times.

Fast forward: Winter. Nothing grows here. We eat lots of animal products, and root vegetables stored in cellars somewhere. Pies and cakes are filled with spices, pumpkin (another veggie stored in cold, dark places), dried fruits, or nuts. We pay fortunes for fruits imported from other parts of the country or of the world and for meager portions of green things. In the meantime, we stare gloomily at barren landscapes of skeletal trees and drab colors.

Although the variety is enjoyable, it can also be a bit jarring. Sometimes, although I am always safe and fed, I feel like I will waste away in the winter. Why is it like this? Why such extremes of abundance and lack? I ask not because I am altogether ignorant of the mechanics of weather, but because I believe in a Maker who intentionally designed this part of the world to function in this way. Does not this entire world speak something from his heart? So what is it about the juxtaposition of seasons, the constant rhythm of yearning in winter and overflowing fullness in summer, that he wants to speak?

I want to raise the question, and mull over it a bit longer yet. For the time being, there are summery things to be done, providing a lovely opportunity for thought and discussion on the matter.

Summer Abundance

We are entering the fullness of summer. In past decades, centuries, summer was the time of abundance and fruitful work that, in many ways, sustained the rest of the year. Little House in the Big Woods (a recent and worthy literary foray) describes the bustle of this time, when Pa and friends would work the fields from dawn until dusk, while Ma and the children would be busy at home, putting away the fruits of the earth.

As a first-year vegetable gardener, I am newly, wonderfully being initiated into the rhythm that naturally governs this part of the world. With the enthusiasm of a novice, I prepared the ground and sowed seeds, all the while unsure that anything would be produced. Late May and early June caught my excitement; the seeds had begun to sprout and take root, forming small plants. The garden mothered by my roommate Wendy was beginning to produce lettuce and herbs.

Then I went away for a week. While I was gone, to the relief of my dog-fearing roommates, there was abundant rain and some sun. As I groggily looked out the kitchen window the morning following my return, I was thrilled to see a full-fledged garden: thriving herbs, happy tomatoes, abundant lettuce and chard. Evidence the Ziploc bag full of homegrown lettuce in the fridge and Wendy’s continual encouragement to give away lettuce and herbs to any visitors.

The full shock of summer came when I, several days later, made it over to my own garden-child, at the loft around the corner. The entire yard was grown up; there were weeds three feet high which had only been 6 inches when I left. A volunteer pumpkin plant had slashed its way another 4 feet through the tall brush (see Dana weeding around it in the photo). The dogs, as ever running happily around, resembled cheetahs speeding through the African brush. And the garden! Weeds I had not yet uprooted in the aisles had spread into a rough green shag carpet. Along the back wall, the sunflowers were nearly taller than I and beginning to form flowers. Bright zinnias had at last awoken, and the nasturtium with their red-orange blossoms formed an unruly base to the bed. Best of all, the vegetables were thriving: the beans formed a zealous two rows and were beginning to bear flowers and fruit, while the squash and melons were beginning to vine along and creep.

About when I spotted the zucchini, something changed for me. The two plants I had left of them were growing giant leaves bigger than my head from vines sturdy and furry. I imagined all the vining plants looking like that, and suddenly the garden seemed very small, and I knew that I was going to have a great deal of squash on my hands. It was no longer an uncertainty, but a concrete future happening that required preparation.

There awaits, therefore, a good deal of work to be done—not only in keeping a garden from becoming a jungle, or harvesting its fruit, but in putting its fruit to good use, honoring my own work, that of my friends, and of the land. As we discovered in picking cherries and jamming them, often the preservation is the greater of the two tasks. This is all well and good. I look forward to learning the art of canning and freezing and storing away, to finding the joy in the task and also in, with each one, easing a bit more the financial burden on a household like ours that yearns to host and serve and provide.

Steven Jones, gardening in style

Steven Jones was a tall, built Black man, decked out in well-fitting overalls, a long-sleeved thermal white shirt, aviator sunglasses, and a beat-up old straw hat. My roommate Dana and I went out to meet him outside the wood fence that encloses the land we garden on. Upon stepping out of the truck, he looked around with a mighty grin and said with enthusiasm, “Aww, we gardening in da HOOD!” We made our introductions and then, with pride, he showed us the plus-sized tiller he had rented for a special job and was going to open up on our little plot.

I had requested a tilling courtesy of the KCCG, who in turn gave my information to this fellow, who makes his living doing such things. For three weeks, I was frequently contacted by this Steven Jones, who, to my frustration, neither enunciated well, nor neatly ended a phone conversation with a goodbye. I put him off, wrapping up loose ends getting the space ready to be tilled. On the other hand, Steven appeared quite eager to get out and till our garden—so eager, in fact, that he managed to make me uncomfortable with his pushiness.

Finally, though, it was time to till. I was resolved to get it over with on Monday. Sure enough, Steven Jones called me just after lunch, and his first words were, “Maggie Sherman, it’s a beautiful day to till a garden!” I rushed home and, being by now a little wary of this dude, collected roommate Dana for safety.

And though I expected to be creeped out or annoyed, I was delighted. I love it when that happens.

Steven unloaded the tiller. Throwing his whole body into the it with gusto, he devoured not only the space we had cleared, but also the margins I had left full of rubble—almost like a hungry (yet endearing) monster. When he had finished, he brought me out onto the tilled ground, remarking that it was “like walking on air,” as if it were a great, rare pleasure in life. Picking up a handful of soil, he told me that it was good and full of nutrients.

As I signed his paperwork, I asked Steven how he had gotten into gardening. Growing up in the hood, he learned how to work land from his grandparents. Now he tills and gardens for a living. In fact, he’ll plant vegetables anywhere he thinks is a good place. “You mean, like guerilla gardening?” I asked (having heard about this wonderful movement where folks plant things here and there and everywhere, regardless of ownership or permission). He chuckled and said, “Yeah, kind of like that,” and told us about how he sells bowls of vegetables to people who are skeptical at first and then amazed when he reveals that he grew them himself. “I’m gonna check back up on you guys,” he told us, again showing pleasure at our location and ambitions.

After we had shut the gate and Steven was back in his truck, Dana and I heard him cackling loudly. “I like that, Maggie,” he yelled. “I’m gonna use that. Guerilla gardening.” He started the truck and drove off.

Won't you be my neighbor?

When I was a little girl, I was even more of a bookworm than I am today, for lack of knowing what else to do. I remember lounging in bed on Saturday mornings, before my parents were up. On such mornings, I often chose an American Girl book from my shelf, as these were easy and brief, able to be devoured in one sitting, like any good breakfast. These books not only entertained me, but they gave flesh and bones to my meager imaginations of American history.

My favorite Girl was Kirsten. She was the daughter of Swedish immigrants, living and farming in the Midwest somewhere. Kirsten, blond hair coiled in braids, got into all sorts of tangles; I especially remember an incident with a black bear. From sitting on the sidelines of Kirsten’s life, I learned about the kind of farm life (albeit romanticized and simplified) that my own great-grandparents experienced but never were able to share with me: immigrants, homesteading, agriculture—even Indians.

This long-tucked-away memory has come floating back to me this week. Our own agricultural enterprise is underway; there’s a small garden plot slowly getting larger as we sift through rubble. Though it’s just the end of March, I’ve got a farmer’s tan well on its way, calluses are forming nicely on my palms, and my arms and shoulders are feeling strong and energized from all the shovel work.

I’ve spent hours out there in the last two weeks, and it’s been really good to labor outside, observing nature at work in various ways. I expected that, and it’s great. There has been a surprise benefit, however. As Dana and I have walked around the corner at the end of the block, we’ve gotten to see some of our neighbors, a family who lives there, in a great, burnt-orange, turn-of-the-century house. The guy has been out working and always turns to greet us with a smile and hello. A week ago we officially met and shared our own general garden missions. This simple situation left my heart warm with goodwill, because this part of town is not typically so friendly. I think people are intimidated into staying inside.

Then there was a neighborly gesture in the form of a kind donation. My friend Alan from the Café responded to my inquiries about fencing by offering just the thing to shut out the two giant dogs who will guard our garden and keep out the little munchy critters: three cattle panels (I didn’t know what they were, but they’re 12-foot long, 4-foot high, steel framed panels). Not only that, but I borrowed my sister’s little red truck for the week, and he loaded and rigged them on tiny truck bed for me so I could make the trek back home. All on his day off.

To complete the endeavor, my dad gave me of those marvelous steel posts you can easily drive into the ground, so I’ll have something to attach the cattle panels to.

Then today, I happened to mention the fact that our wheelbarrow is sick with a flat tire (you know, because I only talk garden these days) in the company of Eddie, Tom and Alan, and Gabriel, another frequenter of the Café. Immediately Gabe piped in and said he’d fix it. He is (among other, very interesting things) a retired race-car driver, and very capable with all things mechanical, so I accepted his offer, and will soon have a functional wheelbarrow.

I feel so wonderfully taken care of by these guys. I’ve been very independent and proud most of my life, unable to acknowledge need or accept help with much grace. But the good Lord has been teaching me, largely through the generosity and neighborliness of these individuals, to receive. When I accept gifts (of the hands and of the heart), I find each time that bonds are strengthened and friendship is formed. From these gifts of fencing and tire repair, I understand that someone stands behind my efforts and believes in what I’m striving for. They, in turn, get the knowledge that they are needed, useful. And let’s be honest: we all need that.

This is what I remember from Kirsten’s community, and they were (I understand) widespread practices in farming communities across the land: barn-raising and corn-husking parties. Men, women, and children would rally together to help each other. There was an understanding of being a body: “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

Wholesome

This is a word that, to most of us, has lost its luster. It’s become a dowdy, old-fashioned, and really, altogether undesirable adjective. We don’t want it to describe us, for fear of sounding prudish, nor our lifestyle, lest it make us seem irrelevant (God forbid!). Wholesome food makes us wrinkle our noses and expect a nasty, perhaps fibrous mess; wholesome television programming promises to put us to sleep.

But let it be known that I am, from today forward, pulling for a renaissance—if not for this word, then for what it comes from and what it implies. Think about where it comes from. Whole. What does that even mean? For starters: “In an unbroken or undamaged state; in one piece.” Hello!

How my life feels compartmentalized, broken in pieces! Work. Home. Family. Boiler Room friends. College friends. Other friends. Cooking. Exercise. Entertainment. Prayer. All are like little drawers with parts that rarely touch. This feeds discontent and loneliness in a way I don’t understand fully. All I know is that socializing is relegated to sitting in a coffee shop or across a dinner table, and the other activities are done mainly alone.

Today was a perfectly lovely day. I had time to myself this morning, then did some food preparation since we’ve had little food prepared in the fridge this last week. Early afternoon, I headed out with two roommates to the KC Community Gardens to sign up for a membership and get some seeds for the spring/summer garden. We talked garden all the way there and back, discussing various methods of fertilizing and pest control, and by the time we got home I was fired up to get started.

My roomies and I chatted while I tested the pH of the soil of the soon-to-be garden plot our landlords have given us access to next to their loft building, which is feet away from Troost, a ghost-town-like avenue that is Kansas City’s line of demarcation between Black and White, wealth and poverty. I cooked some beans that had been soaking and got bread ready to put in the oven before heading down the block to the garden, galoshes squeaking and shovel in newly-gloved hand.

For an hour and a half, my roommate Dana and I attacked an area of maybe 4’x6’ within the 20’x30’ plot we have permission to use. See, the space used to be covered by a twenty-four-plex apartment building, which was demolished years ago, leaving the soil littered feet deep with rubble like a bombed-out city. Some of the stones are huge and would wreck a tiller, so we’re essentially clearing the debris so that it can soon be tilled for use. The sun, hidden for several days now behind its covers of mist and clouds, came out of bed to join us and bathed us in golden, late-afternoon light. Dana and I shared life stories and prayed for our neighborhood while getting some serious exercise and actually doing something productive.

As I dug rocks, tile, brick, and muddy strands of 70’s-orange carpet out of the soil, I was happy and enthusiastic in a way I haven’t been in months. That little bit of dirt scattered with massive pile of dog poop and weeds is hope to me, and it’s bigger and more complicated than I can easily explain. Suffice it to say that I have come to believe that simple, time-consuming work done in the company of dear ones is a balm to many of the things that ail us in this day and age. I cook from scratch, mend clothes, and will garden because I think that it’s more wholesome to do so. In the sense that doing these things, and inviting others to join me, brings the parts closer together.