Hope In The Greenhouse

The future of our lives and of our world is what we plant right now. Starting a garden is always an act of hope, and of defiance. Hope of a brighter day, defiance against the wilderness, or surrounding concrete, defiance against, a climate that more and more is trying to take us out. A garden says, up yours, I will be here tomorrow, cuz someone is gonna have to weed. Someone, is gonna eat like a king, the canning doesn’t do itself. Come what may, I will be here. So, let the winds blow, let the floods come, allow the lunatics to sing. All things pass except that which will be here tomorrow. What will be here tomorrow? What I invest energy into. What I grow. What I plant in the grey damp early in the spring when the greenhouse isn’t as warm as it could be, when I feel drained by the damp cold and the long dark New England winter.

Today, the sun was shining and fluffy small clouds passed over head. For the first time this year, the greenhouse called. It sounded like an itch deep inside my soul, a wind blowing through my brain unsettling me from my other household duties. Today was crazy labor intensive from dawn till, well, now.  Every time I glanced at the door to my greenhouse Fight Song by Rachel Platten, blew through my head on the breezy unconscious of my mind. It seems to play on repeat every so often, when I listen to the news and hear about more tragedy and things I am not comfortable with happening. It also plays when I have to fight myself to get through my homestead day. It also plays when the day is beautiful and tomorrow needs me to battle for it. Today was just such a day. Often out here on my homestead, I feel like a small boat floating in a large world, just swabbing my own decks and holding strong to the big wooden steering wheel, charting my own course through a world that is hostile to both nature and to people like me. People who are not cookie cutter. People who don’t come from a standard situation, people who are highly dyslexic… People who just want something for their lives that most people simply can not wrap their minds around. Being a homesteader is to be a a boat, a place to stand on hard ground in the middle of a larger world, at the whims of the mood of the natural world you depend on. In such circumstances, a garden is the most major act of rebellion of all time.

Under my feet gravel crunches out in the sun soaked greenhouse where my yearly act of rebellion begins each year since we built it. The green things just beginning to pop up, the product of will power on a yuchy day, raise my mood and raise my spirits. All these baby plants make me smile. Later this year we will be eating them and storing them for next winter. I turned the music up and danced with my spray bottle spraying every large container full of new life.

When I start my seeds, I plant them in a container of organic seed starting mix, spray them with water, then cover them over with saran wrap. Until they get large enough to stand up tall uncovered and face the small world of the greenhouse, or dare I call it, my rebel headquarters?

It’s the small acts like this one that speak volumes. The act of giving a seed life. Of growing something that will nourish you that has the most power. It isn’t always the noisy acts. Often it is just these little things and feeding them each day, demonstrating commitment to these tiny lives, that can be and is a protest in and of itself. It is an opting out of a broken system. It is embracing the work that goes into freedom. It is a symbolic act of independence. An act that can feed a community. An act that can be done using methods that are kind to the climate and the earth. Gardens as a protest movement.

When the earth around us starts speaking by giving life to the seeds of protest we plant. There is literally nowhere rebellion isn’t occurring, and nowhere that can be gone to as an escape from the noise of a protest garden. Even if it can be ignored, it can’t be ignored forever, so plant perennials, sooner or later the message will be heard, even if it takes years. My rebel headquarters may be more like a plant NICU, today. But tomorrow it will be a strong food forest full of health and wellness that can sustain not only me.

Times are definitely dark…
We all feel it.
The question we must ask ourselves, is who do we want to be in the moment we are in?
Who do we want to be while the systems many depend on are dismantled?
Sometimes the answer is easier to come to when you can figure out instead who do you NOT want to be.
Homesteading, is for those who decided one thing we never want to be is helpless.
Gardening, is for those determined that tomorrow will be a better more beautiful day than today.
A garden says, “I am not powerless to build the world I want to live in.”
A garden, impacts everyone who sees it, or enjoys eating it.
A garden says, “I build tomorrow.”
Sometimes, the greatest gift we can give ourselves and each other, is to get up, go out in the yuchy, and plant the seeds that will sprout a better world for all of us.
I challenge everyone, to choose to protest constructively by planting the seeds of the future.
Thank you for reading
Amanda of Wildflower Farm