One of the things I've been up to in these past few months is continuing my horticulture education online through NC State University. For the next few posts, I'll be taking over this blog to write about Home Food Production (the name of the class I'm finishing up this semester). I'm excited that this blog is an avenue to further my education and satisfy a requirement for my semester project, but also that the class & project are leading me back to "little seed" to continue writing & sharing here with you.
Home Food Production is exactly as it sounds - cultivating food in your own backyard. This involves home gardening and animal husbandry (beekeeping, chickens, livestock, etc.).
Home gardens are an important way to get the fresh fruits and vegetables that our bodies need to be healthy, vibrant, and best equipped to fight disease, infection, allergies, colds, and many other ailments. I think a lot about what I'm putting into my body and how it will affect me. But often times, I stop short there and don't venture to think about what fed my food. As Michael Pollan said in his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, "you are what what you eat eats too." And that's important.
Right now, I'm at home. My home. It's set up just how I want it (for what my budget allows). To my left is a beautiful fiddle leaf fig tree that towers over the cozy couch I'm lounging on to write this post. The rug on the floor is funky & vibrant & I enjoy looking at it. The temperature is just right. I have food in the kitchen for when I'm hungry, and my little companion, a shepherd/cattle dog mix named Tucker is curled up beside me. I am comfortable. I enjoy being here. And more than that, here in my home, it's set up so that I can thrive. I'm not starving myself, freezing to death, or surrounded by things that are dangerous to me or that I hate.
In the same way that I'm able to grow & live abundantly at home, plants need a home that's set up just right for them to allow them to thrive, and SOIL is the plant's home. The soil is allowing water to stay or drain. It's holding the foods the plant needs. It's jam-packed with microbes and insects. It's makeup determines if the plant will succeed. Yet, overwhelmingly, our society chooses to "enrich" our soil artificially with chemical fertilizers that fall short of creating a good home for the plant. And beyond that, our methods of farming and even home food production have been successful in depleting our soil rather than improving it.
Sir Albert Howard, an English botanist and pioneer in organic farming, put it this way: "Artificial manures (synthetic fertilizers) lead inevitably to artificial nutrition, artificial food, artificial animals, and finally to artificial men and women."
Dan Barber, the famous chef of Blue Hill restaurant in Manhattan, agrees. He sees an absolutely vital connection between how we cultivate our soil, how we grow food, and how we EAT. He discusses the "future of food" in his book The Third Plate, and writes, "Healthy soil brings vigorous plants, stronger and smarter people, cultural empowerment, and the wealth of a nation. Bad soil, in short, threatens civilization. We cannot have good food - healthy, sustainable, or delicious - without soil filled with life."
So how can we practically, in our very own backyards, begin to enrich our soil? Read more in my next post of this two-part series on soil.
