The Avalon Organic Gardens, Farm, and Ranch Report

I was reading an article in a recent ACRES publication.  If you’re not familiar with ACRES, it is one of the best out there for those interested in REAL agriculture and related news alternative to mainstream.  In his writing, “Our Soil’s Cosmic Connection”, Harold Willis talks about the constant rain of space dust that accumulates in our soil.  Even though the amounts are miniscule in comparison to amendments farmers and gardeners add annually, he is correct that it shouldn’t be ignored as unimportant overall to our soils compositions.  In homeopathy, biodynamic preparations, and Bach flower remedies for instance, we understand that their worth is dependant on very subtle essences and often minute amounts that seem contradictive to the standard idea of “more is better”.  In some cases these are energies and substances that are not measurable by our modern scientific instruments.  Still, they work, millions will testify.

This article, while focused in a scientific manner, reminded me of all the forces at work on our farm with our plants and animals that are hardly measurable, seen, or understood.  In the course of four seasons we experience a whole range of interesting surprising observations, from mysterious seeds appearing, a healing for an animal that was too far gone (to someone’s eye), plants acting in manners never observed before: displaying characteristics from buried genes(?), growth in  different ways (lettuce thriving in 100+ degrees), … too many to list or remember.  I’ve gotta start recording these things better. 

While our understandings of all the forces at work is expanding due to those good brothers and sisters in the fields who are going deeper into their work (just read a copy of ACRES to see this), there is still so much to be discovered as integral parts of the processes behind the scenes.  It often seems here that whatever effort we put forth in our gardens we are met with assistance from the “other side”.  No matter how knowledgeable a person can get about gardening, to go further with it they must reach into levels of intuition, deeper sensitivity, and do I dare say… faith? 

Gardening with faith, yes faith in the processes set forth from time’s beginning to facilitate this amazing process.  A faith that there is a motion both seen and unseen that is greater than me (the tiny little gardener in the vast cosmos), that I have the ability to join with or stumble over and impede if I get in the way.  How wondrous it is to cut a branch off a fig, put in a glass cup on the window sill, and watch it grow roots, large leaves, and even begin to fruit!  Or how about the lettuce that went to seed last fall, blowing about when the winds picked up.  Later in January, little tiny dark red sprouts poked out and I chuckled to myself how their desire to grow was so strong, but with a bad sense of timing.  “They can make it on their own if they so choose such a time to go for it.”  Well, a couple weeks later, with their tender new leaves 1 inch spread, they survived a drop into the teens, without skipping a beat!  Ok, if they want to gift themselves to us that bad, I thought, here is some straw to snuggle in.  They ended up filling our salad bowls in the early spring.  And of course, enough people have noted that within a tiny seed that has inside it the programming to expand 10,000 times bigger in size and complexity.  Seems like some kinda spiritual metaphor I’ve heard before. 

Faith that this planet can become the Garden of Eden that it is destined to be.

Here on the ranch we have our live-in training programs rotating with visitors, including our dear WWOOFers.  It’s nice to have help, to share what we’re learning, to serve next to kindred souls, and hear new stories.  If you read this, wherever you are, come on and jump in for a week –we’ll feed ya good (wink!).  The cooks are whipping up some incredible smoked baba ganoush with the ai gua eggplant.  Someone figured out the tricky trick to making pita bread to go with it too.  And there’s nothing like picking cinnamon, genovese, and nufar basil in the morn, and having pesto greeting you at lunch time.

Our okra is coming in, and I figured a lot of the folks in our CSA program would be surprised by it, but most already knew about when we delivered.  They were happy still to have it as one of the next new veggies.  I guess it’s escaping from the South more over time.  Finally makes sense about its beautiful flowers when I read it’s related to hibiscus and hollyhocks.  All the way from Ethiopia they say.  The miles things and plants and peoples have traveled to get to where we all find ourselves now.

I hear that the sugar industry has bowed to the GMO players now, so mark off beet sugar next to the corn-derived sweeteners as a dangerous non-food additive.  Soybeans are about taken over now by those same players, and these people have been buying up heirloom and other seed companies to squeeze the market narrower, I’ve been told. After the USA, Argentina, Brazil, Canada and India are the leaders in GMO crops.  Will the voice of the people be heard loud enough to turn their agricultural future around?  Another way to put it is: how secure is your food supply, really?  When a poor farmer in Dinod, Haryana, India can’t save his seed because the seed’s code to continue its lineage forward has been destroyed, then there is no future.  Or because the companies have made it illegal to save their copyrighted seed.  What a mess.

The good news is that traditional crops are making a comeback in Kenya, Cuba is extending agriculture land rights for its co-ops, urban gardening is taking off in Detroit, and beekeeping also is taking flight in cities all over as a sustainable, local, and practical food source.  Who could resist some home-grown Brooklynified honey dripped on their big apple?  Yes, our own Avalon Garden honey, pollen, propolis, and wax, is on its way in due time.