“Mother earth never attempts to farm without livestock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve the soil and prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted into humus; there is no waste; the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another; ample provision is made to maintain large reserves of fertility; the greatest care is taken to store the rainfall; both plants and animals are left to protect themselves from disease.”
—Sir Albert Howard
I was just researching when my dad called and asked me this guy’s last name: the so-called father (it should be mother) of modern organic gardening.
It is Sir Albert Howard, and he wrote down in “An Agricultural Testament” in 1940 what he had learned about holistic farming, or what he called “Nature’s Farming”, after 23 years of observation and experience in Indore (an area in India).
In theory, this should really make the Indians the mothers of organic gardening, but so is life. Either way, Sir Albert, for all his wonderful vision, was also not the originator of the term ‘organic farming.’
An excerpt from the article A History of Organic Farming:
Walter Northbourne was apparently the first to apply the word “organic” in application to farming. In 1940, Northbourne published an influential book, Look to the Land, in which he elaborated on the idea of the farm as an “organic whole”—in the philosophical sense “organic” refers to “having a complex but necessary interrelationship of parts, similar to that in living things.”
It’s hard to believe that that’s not our first commandment: “Thou shalt see the world as whole, a complex but neccessary interrelationship of parts, and treat Her accordingly.”
And while you’re at it, try not to covet your neighbour’s wife, and vice-versa.
This concept of organic is similar in many respects to the holistic ideas more recently expressed by James Lovelock in the Gaia Hypothesis and Lynn Margulis in her book Symbiotic Planet, but on the smaller scale of a whole farm as a symbiotic unit.
In this respect the organic farmer functions in concert with the symbiotic unit by being in daily contact with and having a feeling for the whole farm organism.
Could agribusiness possibly get any further from this concept?
It is also important to distinguish this meaning of “organic” as it applies to a system of farming from the common misunderstanding that “organic” specifically refers to the carbon based chemistry of the fertilizers that are often used in organic farming.
The full article is here.
And back to my research. What a great life…
Love to you and yours, and may your food be full of untortured, well-loved life (with a grand awareness of the incredible work it takes to grow food. I do not for a moment write here to romaticize the farm life—by all accounts it is hard, hard work),
Pete
I’ve been reading for some years (and to some extent practicing) the tenets of things like ecopsychology and deep ecology, which tend to reflect not just the ideals of organic farming, but of living more in harmony with the planet as a being. Arne Naess talks about the value of the world in itself, regardless of any utilitarian value to human beings. Ecopsychology talks about the necessity of being aware of and linking into the natural world as an extension of our mental and spiritual health. Theodore Roszak has written extensively on the topic for the popular press.
A lot of this stuff has been brewing recently in the back of my mind as I’ve been thinking about content for my own blog stuff. The path I walk has so much to do with getting out into the world, with being away from the urban, with recognizing myself as another dust mote in a universe of dancing motes under the sun. And yet, that said, I love living an urban life.
We are so full of contradictions. I’ve lived on a farm and no, it’s not easy work by any means. I wouldn’t want to live on a farm again. I value the human environment of cities, the constant variety, the company, the culture. It’s very hard for me to live in the kind of isolation that rural life tends to promote, despite the fact that I’m very hermit-like in my daily habits. But I like to have places to go when I’m feeling social that I don’t have to drive for an hour or two to find, to have a tea shop where I can hang out and have friends come in the door unexpectedly, to have bookshops to browse and restaurants to sample.
I wish I could find some balance between my suburban Everett affordability and my urban Seattle sensibilities. Things are going to get very bad when the gas gets much more expensive.
Thanks for the great note and links.
I think, lovely Erynn, that the urban life is here to stay—and I too am comfortable here in the city. My back would last about three minutes doing true manual labour.
But if a balance can’t be found, so much, I think, can be done. If possible, put money into the coffers of local growers; eat food that has been raised with a sense of the earth and sustainability; avoid factory-farm food; even grow one’s own little garden (if at all possible). In other words, drift otwards support less and less those those conglomerations who are against such processes.
I also think a lot of nature is to be found not only out there in the hills and meadows (but how beautiful that sounds!), but by going inwards; to listen to the rhythms of our breathing and our nature; in a little more devotion to its bauty; a little more silence; by listening; by stretching our spines and relaxing our bellies. That too is nature—perhaps in its most immediate and beautiful sense.
My hunch is, by doing that, many secrets will be rlevealed that lead us towards answers of balance, care and nature, and sustainability.
We are indeed dancing under the sun—and fed by that sun, nurtured by that sun and kept alive by that sun, which makes us dancing mysteries, beings, dreamers and countless other things blowing through this linear moment, beyond the simplicity of dust motes (which are probably quite something too, close up—and I got your drift, too, to be sure).
If you can’t go West, young woman, go within!
Lots of organic love to you,
Pete
I wrote an essay for a book on modern Druidism some years back where I talked about the internal wilderness and how important it is to connect with that, but at the same time to be concerned for outer wilderness as well. It seems like folly to me to be concerned with the spirit-salmon you talk to in your dreams, but not the dying salmon runs in the streams near your home. Yet many “spiritual” people seem perfectly content to act in just that fashion.
I’ve been looking into local organic food farm organizations that do deliveries or have local centralized pick up locations. One thing I’m concerned about, on a limited income, is figuring out how much of the food I would actually be able to use so that I don’t end up spending a great deal on lovely veggies that end up going to waste!
Some of the reading I’ve been doing about organics and food suggests that if you can’t really afford to go entirely organic, some things are better to get organic than others because of lower risks — I buy my half and half for my tea organic whenever I can, for instance. And I also try to encourage fair trade practices. I get a lot of my tea from a tea shop in Seattle where the owner goes to Taiwan and buys direct from the farmers twice a year. You can’t get much more fair trade than direct dealing between the shop and the tea farmer! And the tea is lovely stuff, too. Very tasty and satisfying. It’s a much more soulful experience than generic teabags, and I’ve learned to appreciate tea in the Chinese style in tiny cups to be savored rather than large mugs strictly drunk for caffeine intake. (Though yes, I do that too…) Everett has a little co-op grocery store down by the waterfront that I really should become much more intimately acquainted with.
Changing an entire lifestyle takes time and consistent practice. I work on being mindful and present, though I don’t always succeed — I’m human after all.
Sunday I took a trip out to the Shinto shrine in Granite Falls for their Great Spring Ceremony. The inner shrine doors are only opened twice a year, and this is one of those ceremonies. It was a very renewing, comfortable experience. The shrine is set in a lovely rural area, right on the banks of the Pilchuck river. The shrine building is open to the elements most of the time, and that day the side doors were open as well as the main shrine doors. I think you’d very much enjoy visiting it if you ever get the chance. The feeling of harmony with the environment there is very palpable. The fresh mochi made right there with participation from the shrine members was fantastic too! It’s a very different experience than the store-bought stuff!
They even have a shrine kitty that comes and purrs in people’s laps during the ceremonies.
Mmm. True contentment.
Hi Pete,
I have to agree with Erynn, it’s hard to focus inward when the outward is a mess, but that could be a girl thing. We are the ones who can’t go to bed without straightening up the kitchen. And I do believe men and women are very different critters, but if we play to each others’ strengths instead of against, it’s an unbeatable force. But I digress.
Urban may be here to stay, but I could easily do without it. My heart lies somewhere a little past rural toward wilderness. When we bought our house, we purposely chose rural (suburban now, there’s no stopping the sprawl) to raise our son.
We try to buy organic, local, and in season, and there are several family farms near us, but most have gone over to landscaping to accommodate the sprawl. Can’t argue; it’s much more lucrative.
Though I grew up in a suburban neighborhood, there’s farming in my family and I wanted my son to understand the land and nature as I learned to. Society is frighteningly disconnected from our food sources. Most people don’t realize fresh produce has an “earthy” smell. I have a friend who wondered why potatoes are always so dirty and she was grossed out when I told her green beans are fuzzy right off the plant. As kids we were always chewing on mint leaves, which nearly sent my friend off the deep end. She couldn’t believe we “chewed leaves off a plant from the yard!?”
Erynn is absolutely correct; farm life is hard work. And we didn’t even have a forklift to move a sick animal. Seriously, most people want out after mucking the barn the first time. There are no days off. Cows need to be milked and put out to pasture so they can eat the solar energy-filled grass that they magically turn into more of that protein-laden, lactose-filled energy source we call milk. Whoa, is that I a cycle I see? Darn that nature, coming up with stuff like that all the time.
It’s all right there in front of us. Everything we need. (I can hear you typing the “need vs. greed” quote from Gandhi.) And urban is good, as long as one keeps in touch with the natural, because urban is so wholly manmade. So in the process of domesticating the world around us, we’ve so domesticated ourselves we can’t recognize our food sources if they aren’t in a clearly-labeled package. Wait, there are no clearly-labeled packages, my mistake.
Looking inward is revealing and necessary, but I need the hills, meadows, mountains, and especially the water to find the peace and sense of being complete to turn inward. Focus on the sound of a creek rolling by and see where it takes you. Can you smell a thunder storm coming? It’s a little acidic. You can tell by how the animals behave too, but you have to stop and watch to learn how each one reacts. You don’t need to live on a farm; the family dog or cat can tell you too. And the wind shifts because the air pressure is changing. It’s all right there, you just have to hold still and watch.
Love to you and yours,
Karen
Karen — that so resonates with my childhood. I grew up next door to a dairy farm and if I wanted to play with the kids, I had to help them with the chores so they’d have some time to play before they had to have dinner, do homework and go to bed. I spent hours weeding gardens and hoeing rows of potatoes. And my grandfather ran a trap route that I helped with as a kid — he was supplementing the entirely inadequate social security check he and grandma got. We weren’t exactly subsistence farmers, but it was pretty close.
I know and definitely appreciate where my food comes from and firmly believe that a little dirt never hurt anybody, nor did a little physical labor. My creaky fibromyalgiaed body, though, isn’t up to mowing lawns or doing the work to have a garden, more’s the pity. Urban life suits me but I agree that people shouldn’t be so cut off from the world that they have no idea where their food comes from. I get out into the woods or down to the sea as often as I can to go camping and if anything wild is in season, I’m happy to make a meal of it. Huckleberries, salmon berries, fiddlehead ferns, chantrelles. The world is a giving place if we know how to look.
It would be fantastic if everyone had the opportunity to spend time on a farm and to get out into wilderness, but so many families live in abject poverty in the middle of cities. It’s hard to consider getting out into the countryside if you can’t even put the worst kind of junk food on your table. Poverty is cruel and it takes its toll on human minds and souls in so many ways. Some kids, the only “wildlife” they ever see is pigeons, rats, and cockroaches.