The US has deliberately pushed farms to consolidate into gigantic monstrosities.
Meanwhile, the average American now grows nothing edible. And is even prejudiced against the growing of food, as one can see by the preponderance of HOAs and city codes.
In a community of properly educated people, it’s easy to envision a network of yards filled with various good edibles, as each desires to cultivate.
An orchard could stretch across city blocks, with trees in different yards pollinating each other.
One neighbor has baskets of apples; another, a wheelbarrow of organic greens; another, herbs for medicines – and yet another, oil-rich nuts containing needed minerals mined deep beneath the sidewalks.
Why would this be difficult? The effort is already being made to maintain grass and toxic azaleas and oleanders. The most irrigated “crop” in the US is grass!
All is needed is a paradigm shift in thinking. Which is hopeless at present, as the entire system exists to make us believe we are radically individualistic even as we live in coddled babyhood with our water, electric, gas, and food umbilicals threaded in from far away. We are just a matter of days away from anarchy and starvation at any time.
Our mindsets are broken.
I met a man on the street in Hannibal who told me he was hired by a lady to do some yardwork. She said, “go clean up all those apple branches over there.”
He agreed to do the work, but then, in horror, he realized she had cut down a half-dozen mature and fruiting apple trees! He told me there were still beautiful apples hanging on the piles of branches. Someone in the past had planted a small orchard. Now all that was left was six stumps.
The woman who did that is probably unfixable. But she will die out and a new generation will take her place.
There are many elderly people toodling around in RVs right now and playing pickleball. They ate the seed corn and have spent their children’s inheritance. They grew up in a prosperous nation which no longer exists.
Never mind them. We’ll plant trees they can’t cut down.
Did your parents plant trees? Did your grandparents? Many did not.
The entire mindset of the culture somehow shifted from production to consumption, from looking forwards to simply looking within and pleasing ourselves.
A real community could exist where neighbors pass produce over the fence and raise chickens in the city. Where no one would even think of citing a man for growing a garden in his front yard, or citing a woman for keeping ducks.
Maybe we’ll be the ones to build it. Or our children will.
When the cheap credit and oil and electric run low and times get tight, and the fake green revolution nonsense ends in lots of waste and broken garbage, I do think things will change and people will get back to the soil and to real community.
Even if they don’t, it’s a beautiful thing to think about. And at least we can make a start of it with our family and friends and neighbors.
4 comments
Replace your lawn with – based on your interests and circumstances:
Native plants (preferably some edible)
Food forest
Vegetable, herb, and flower gardens
Edible (and/or medicinal) ground covers
Walkways – made with slow-decaying organic material like wood chips (with leaves – from a tree service, not the large, dyed wood chips sold at garden centers)
You don’t have to get rid of all the lawn at once; the process of replacing the lawn can take multiple years.
On a related note, public areas – some guerilla gardeners plant young trees in empty spaces. Other guerilla gardeners graft fruit-bearing branches on public trees that do not bear fruit. Some guerilla gardeners are doing this with the ornamental plums common in Northern California.
replace your lawn with…. or if you have a big lawn, you can keep it and install some sheep ;)
Amen!
While we’re all working toward this idyllic goal, it also wouldn’t hurt to call your representatives in congress and badger them about supporting the PRIME act. I don’t give it good odds, but it’s a step in the right direction.
On the other hand, no matter what happens with that bill, we can all grow food, share it, trade it, and otherwise start being the change we want to see in the world :)
The Prime Act needs all the publicity it can get. Not much legislation I support but it’s a real grass roots project that I endorse. As if my endorsement means anything.