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GARDENING
Farewell to a Garden
Part 1 of a 3-part series
I haven’t posted lately because my time was taken up in prepping for a move, which entailed finishing up a paid gig and passing along important info to the person who would be tending the farm beds after my departure. “Wait, what?” you might be asking. “Wasn’t this farm the place you were going to stay all season?” Indeed it was, and more on that later, in part 2.
This installment is a share of garden photos, which I’d been wanting to do all along but hadn’t had time for. Part 2 will detail my reasons for leaving, and part 3 encapsulates my big picture reflections on what I learned and how it applies to what I already knew.
At this farm, a market farm, I had four beds of my own to plant up and harvest from personally. Most of my time was spent on general farm tasks and in setting up beds for the market operation, but these beds were of course my favorite and served as a vital home for my heart as well as being a provider for my stomach. They were a mix of veggies, medicinals and one trial grain crop. I only got to enjoy a small amount of everything because most of it wasn’t ready yet when I left, but I passed the beds along to a friend of mine at the farm, and she will definitely be appreciating it all.
Every summer I am torn between farm work and wildtending/foraging. I appreciate the wild/feral experiences because they are all about connecting with ecosystems and their denizens and exploring how to interact with them with reciprocity, in part by observing what not to do: that is, how destructive we civilized humans have been to so many places. I appreciate farm work because I love fresh vegetables, and I am deeply interested in how to cultivate respectful relationships with plants being grown for consumption, which is a challenge that is ignored by most people in our culture, including most farmers.
