Bioneers Gathering

 I held my hand up to my mouth, wiped at my eyes as if my allergies were acting up, not as if I was convulsing in agreement, my heart beating out of my chest with understanding about this love and excitement for something as small as a seed. Yes, talk of seeds brought me to tears. 
Every. 

Single. 

Time. 

And not in a 'Hey lets buy this packet of Freckled Lettuce' type of excitement (although I love that, too), but in the 'Wow these are my people that KNOW that a seed is more than just a tiny speck of matter' sort of way. They know a seed is soil and health and freedom and revolt and pure life wrapped in the memories of ancestors and land and countless sunrises.

Each night I slept in my car so I could buy more books, be early to the keynote speeches (conversations), immerse myself in the energy of the gathering place. 
(and hell yeah, I was being cheap because the tickets were not)
(but at least the scholarships were plentiful and included this youth attendee who wrote about it too)

Each morning opened with drums and dancing and stomping throughout the auditorium. 

And coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. 

Each day was filled with talk, with listening, with clapping and snapping and sighing and screaming:

A mushroom hat-wearing Paul Stamets describing how mycelium can heal the world. I wanted to shout, “I know, I know! I learned how to grow oyster mushrooms! I get excited about mycelium running through the compost pile! The fact that mushrooms are closer to animals than plants kinda freaks me out, but it is soooo cool!” 

Eve Ensler passionately, poetically ranting about eating that apple of light and truth and becoming the Eve that flicked off the patriarchy. My fingers itched to begin writing plays then and there. Rise up with my old love (theater) and circle back with a revolutionary tongue.

The bizarre scene of Vandana Shiva sitting at a small folding table in a sterile hotel banquet room. Did they not know the space would be bursting at the seams with admirers? Couldn't they have picked a venue with at least one living plant? She spoke eloquently of farmers fighting back against Monsanto corn in Mexico, tragically of bankrupt farmers hanging themselves with Monsanto seeds in their pockets in India. She spoke of quantum physics, of undissolvable energy and matter, of hope.

I could list each speaker, each inspiration, each Yes! that erupted from my lips as the person in front of me read my mind. Or blew my mind open with possibilities. 

But I won’t. It lasted for three full days and my notebook is full.

I will say that gathering with community, speaking of the beautiful actions and thoughts we CAN realize even among the ugliness and despair- it changed me. 

I am still buzzing and plotting and growing.

Going to a forum like Bioneers is one way to get a dose of hope. 
We all need that. 

Find it. Get it. Grow it. Gather and nourish. 

It is up to us. 

Growing

He was sitting on the sidewalk in front of McDonalds, face tan and worn, ragged bag by his side. I pulled at my farm hat, fumbled with my phone, swung the watering can, walked faster towards the farm site just a block up Park Blvd. I wanted to seem busy as I passed so he wouldn't ask me for anything. I didn't have any food except my leftovers in a tin pail. I couldn't give him the tin pail could I? Should I?
Two kids sat across from him munching on Sausage McMuffins and all I could think was how can people think, work, get healthy, get un-homeless eating that crap? Sure its a stretch, sure people with jobs eat Sausage McMuffins, but think of all the clarity, the health, the work that would get done if we didn't.

"Hey," he said. Do I acknowledge or no? Yes, he is a person. I braced myself to tell him I didn't have change.

"I need to be watered."

I looked at his blue eyes smiling up at me.  I readjusted the watering can in my hand. "Don't we all?" I thought but didn't say. I was sorry for thinking he just wanted money for me and having to tell myself he was human, I should interact. But we shared a smile, a brief connection. He made me think and feel in a different way for a moment and I grinned my way to the flower site with the interaction velcroed to my heart.

We call it the flower site because we haven't been able to grow food there because there is lead. But we are planting marigolds for Day of the Dead and corn and squash to send away to a lab to see if there is lead in the tissues, hoping we have planted and amended and healed the soil maybe just a little.
I lean on a digging fork and talk to fellow Ag students about circuitous routes to becoming a farmer. We talk about geeky excitement over seed catalogs and marvel at red and yellow kernels tunneled into the composting earth. About wanting to help, change, fight, and realizing it all comes back to food. We talk about gangs, the prison system, the school system, our neighborhoods. That pizza is classified as a vegetable in cafeterias across the country and that nutrient deficiencies can cause anger which can cause crime which locks people away which kills our communities.

We all need to be watered.

Back at the main farm I stared into the bolting row of lettuce. There are two ways to harvest lettuce for a fancy loose leaf mix: cut it all down  about an inch or two from the base and let it grow back or take the oldest leaves from the outside of the plant leaving the newest smallest ones to regenerate the bulk from the middle. Sudden all encompassing injury or many small damages? Which is a slower death and/or which gives us more out of (it's) life? It will never fully recover, but what is the least traumatic? How can it heal most fully?

The row still needs to be watered, even in its shorn state.
Especially in its shorn state.

I want to give those kids eating Sausage McMuffins an apple, a roasted beet, a freshly harvested Purple Haze carrot. I want to reestablish the connection between food and feeling, food and action, food and living. I want to nourish and water and grow back the traditions we have lost that tell us that food is the most important thing. For our physical AND social well being.

I'll need a really big watering can, but I'll find it.