Paridise Near the Highway

Yesterday, we got a chance to work on Alemany Farm, an urban farm in San Fransisco. This was amazing for several reasons, but mainly because I spent so much time researching community gardens last semester trying to figure out how to strenghten the UGROW network in Worcester without ever getting a chance to get my hands dirty.

It was nice to be part of the creation of food. It was even more exciting to be nourishing plants that will one day nourish the bodies of someone else and connecting to the land while surrounded by so many wonderful people.

I was also interesting to think of urban gardening as a nonviolent protest-- the modern day of Gandhi's spinning. (By producing their own clothing Indians were able to show the British government that they were not relied upon by the people.

I learned so much yesterday. I saw a lemon tree for the first time and ate some of it's leaves. I learned what Mexican sage looks like. It reminds me of purple pussy willows. I learned that if you are growing a root vegetable like garlic it is good to cut off the flower so that the energy can go to the root. (Makes perfect sense, right!) I also learned that garlic flowers taste really good. Most importantly I learned that their are great people in this world, who think like me:

Peace is the only way. It's more logical and ensures the greatest rewards in the long run. Peace comes from a place that is deep and not completely reachable by the brain. It requires something that can only be described with the limited words that I own as spirituality. There is this understanding of connectedness, Love, and faith that is required. True peace and spirituality cannot be separated.

We were asked after a 5 hours of working on the farm to go around in a circle and tell the group our high and low of the day. Here were mine:

Low:

I realized how separated I am from to production of my own food, which is sad. I thought about the violence on the Earth that happens because so many of us rely on factory farmed produce and synthetic food. But it was even more disappointing to me that this was the first time that I was ever given the chance to garden. I somehow felt robbed of a right that should never be taken away. It was an amazing meditation on the interconnectedness of life and the power of creation, and how all human beings are constantly part of that process. I feel like if I had had that opprotunity as a child I would have been much wiser, and if I had that opportunity regularly that I would be a lot happier.

High:

From this beautiful 3-acre farm you could see this crazy 3-lane, twisty-turvey, highway. Someone reported this as a low, but for me it was amazing. It showed hope that citizens/human beings could regain control of the land. It was ours. It should me that there was hope, and that nature and the urban environment were not things that existed as opposites to one another but could coexist.