Friday, May 22, 2015

May 22, 2015 - The Sheep In The Meadow


The sheep are in the meadow, the apple trees are in bloom in the background, and everything is the way it’s supposed to be.  The day feels very easy.  That is, nothing feels forced.  There is nothing that has to happen.  There is no clock and no deadline.  Everything plods along in its own time.

The sheep in the meadow.

If everyone in America grew a little garden, what would happen?  I think we might get just a little closer to finding that everything is the way it’s supposed to be.  It’s amazing how much food you can get out of a tiny space, and I mean tiny.  Lettuce and spinach in the cool spring.  The planting of peas and beans, staggered every few weeks, that run up fences and take almost no room at all.  Fruitful tomatoes, hot peppers, eggplants, and lots and lots of cucumbers for pickling and eating in the dark months.  Potatoes and carrots for the cellar.  And cabbage.  Definitely cabbage for sauerkraut throughout the winter.  Herbs in planter boxes hanging off the porch railing, for eating fresh and drying to use in the winter.

What to do with all the food?  Eat it, freeze it, can it, dry it, ferment it, share it.  All gotten without a supermarket.  Blasphemy.  Subversion.  Treason.  Oh, the free-thinking mind.  Is there no end to its masterful plots?

Gather the goodness while ye may, my friends.