What's broken can be made beautiful
What nature has to teach us about the cycles of life, part 1
Five years ago, I thought that eating local was when you have your favorite local restaurant make you a burger. Never mind the source of the meat, cheese, or bun. Never mind the added ingredients, or the process that brought you that mouthwatering meal of meat and cheese.
Five years ago, I had never watched a tomato plant grow, or snipped fresh herbs to top my pasta dish. I was really truly ignorant to it all.
Food just was. Wasn’t it?
I was guilty of completely taking the availability of different products for granted. Until, shortages. Enter 2020 - a year that stopped me in my tracks; what would happen if this all just…stopped?
Because it did. We watched the world stop in many, many ways, and although most people retained access to food on demand (with adjustments, for sure), there’s no denying that this major world event got us thinking.
I started to ponder how many of my own needs I could actually meet if I was forced to.
This first started with seeking to need less. I stopped buying a lot of things, and started looking at food differently. I started a garden in 2020 and had so much fun playing around with making pickled peppers, throwing tomatoes in everything, and always having fresh basil that I was hooked.
The next year of gardening was harder, actually, but I was too excited to be discouraged enough to stop. My eyes were open to the magical that is self-sustainability, and getting closer to the land. I knew I would become an advocate for this way of life, even in my infancy.
Year over year, I find that the grooves I made inmy brain from the year before have gotten a little bit deeper. I no longer wince looking at the prices of pasture raised eggs, or soil grown vegetables because as chronic health conditions pile up, I know their worth. I prioritize my time outside tending to gardens over pretty much every other extracurricular, and I soak up new knowledge like a sponge.
I take learning risks, trying to make and taste new things.
I learn to work with what I have, not what I need to go buy.
Truly, I have watched myself go through a process of change, and it hasn’t been comfortable. It has however been making me feel alive, because all of this, the process of going ‘back to the land’ makes so, so much sense.
I recently had a conversation with a woman with 17 chickens in an urban backyard, and she told me about how her chickens eat the ‘weeds’ out of her garden, and then she composts their poop to use as fertilizer in the garden. It was the best example of regenerative agriculture I think I’ve ever heard. What’s more beautiful than that?
Mullein, an herb notorious for being able to thrive in disturbed soils
Nature operates in perfect rhythm, humans are the ones who’ve screwed up the harmony, selecting for traits of optimal performance.
So today, I ask you, have you been honoring YOUR seasons?
Remember that you aren’t built for optimal performance day in and day out. You’re going through rest, rebirth, growth, and reflection all of the time.
If you feel this, I encourage you to keep following your heart to the things that light you up. Those are all clues, inviting you closer and closer to your truth.
And if some of the activities I described above are part of that; gardening, composting, keeping chickens, etc… would you be so kind as to leave me a comment and tell me what you’re excited about?
I’m co-running a local farmer’s market this summer, and part of what we will offer is free to the community workshops on different aspects of nature-based living. Fun for kiddos, too. I would love to hear from you as far as what types of learnings you’d like to see, or really just what you’d like more exposure to.
‘Til next time.
—Christina