Yesterday, I gazed out over the summer breeze ruffling the leafy tops of the growing potatoes, watching the bees busy with their pollinating and felt the warm sun glance across the tomatoes and corn growing well in the adjoining plots. This is our vegetable garden at Villa St. Joseph during the summer. A year of Covid and many surprises- super wet, super dry and super hot. Yet our organic gardens have weathered the variations, and are going to yield a good harvest, having been blessed by vital soil health, beneficial insects and an interrelationship of harmony among species and humans. Its not perfect, but its in harmony with all that is. It makes me reflect on what we consider “perfection” to be. Being involved in agriculture in my early years in our market garden farm in B.C., I know well the strict grading systems of marketing vegetables in today’s commercial world of food production. So often quality is graded by the “perfect” size, blemish free skin and travel hardiness. Wholesome flavour, learning to live with imperfections and family values were often lost along the way. When we started this vegetable garden, some 20 hears ago now at Villa St. Joseph, the soil was a sandy loam with little humus, meagre nutrient capacity and poor water retention capability. Crops did not grow that well and insect infestations happened often. In Organic Agriculture it is a well known axiom that it takes about 7 years to develop a harmonious interrelationship between soil health, crops grown, beneficial insects and humans learning to listen to Nature’s promptings. Humans learning to listen to Nature’s promptings might be the most difficult piece! Typically, humans decide what they’d like an environment to be and try to make Nature fit into it. It’s the story of our beleaguered Earth today. But as anyone who’s tried to push & pull a stubborn cow into a barn knows, “that just ain’t the way its done”.
Today Organic Agriculture has a “new name.” Its now called Regenerative Farming. At first, I wasn’t that keen on the change and now, the terms are used inter-changeably. But changing the name allowed organic farming to be introduced to a new generation of farmers and invite on-board an older generation of farmers who were realizing that chemical farm production doesn’t have all the answers, especially in today’s era of climate change. Indigenous Agriculture was practiced for millennia by Indigenous Peoples across the Earth. Each Traditional Peoples learned the ways of their land, what it was saying to them and grew crops in usually small areas sustainably managed. It is the basis of what we know today as the practices and disciplines of Permaculture, Organic Agriculture and Regenerative Farming. My own beginnings with growing began when I when I was apprenticed to a gardener” named Dell when I was 3 ½ years of age. My mom was a single parent left with an infant and 3 ½ year old child. She took my baby brother to work in a playpen and I was a bit of a handful at 3. So, our neighbour Dell, who was the local gardener, took me on as often as she could. My first lessons were in “looking and listening to the plants”. If I didn’t understand something or questioned her interminably, as 3 year old’s do, her response would be to tell me stay put - just look and learn to really see what was happening in the garden. Sitting there, nestled amongst the plants, I would find a whole world in nature to explore. She taught me well about “listening to what the land and the plants were saying.” I’m still learning. And learning how blessed that kind of being nurtures the soul. Perhaps you might like to spend some time with the plants on your balcony or the flowers or vegetables in your garden today. They have much wisdom for our human souls. Its about a perfection of the heart. Its something we keep growing into
