Animal, Vegetable, Radical: The Radicalism of Growing your own food

“…the greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.” – Bill Mollison


(Sidenote: I've just come back from a very empowering all-female poetry slam, so I apologize in advance if this post does not have heavier doses of cheeky, witty dialogue peppered within it!)


This past weekend, I attended the Guelph Organic conference, where I heard from speakers about co-operative business structures, forest gardening, permaculture, and, not surprisingly, I was re-inspired about the radical potential of small scale gardening. 


Like many, I struggle with Western guilt, with the understanding that what I have, what WE have, is too much, it comes from places and is made in ways that I couldn't bear to stand in front of and condone. 


Like many, I struggle with the question "what do I have to offer", in the face of seemingly insurmountable political, social and environmental issues that make me feel at best a sheep and at worst a fly on the windshield.


And then, I buy some seeds. I borrow a shovel. I get a friend to drive me to the city's compost depository and grab some beautiful black earth. I put them all together in my backyard, and I am now an important link in the chain of life. I bypass the corporate food agenda that poisons my friends and loved ones, I bypass the need for food stamps at the grocery store where mothers buy their kids Dunkaroo's because they're on sale and it's all they can afford. I put a seed in the earth and the Earth provides for me and there is nothing else but the Earth and I, as it should be. 


This is idealist. I know. I cannot plant a seed and produce a laptop, cell phone, university degree, car, plane, or a functioning public transit system. But I would not die without those things.  Were all those things to pass away, my knowledge of how to grow food, how to nourish my body with it, would be my most cherished and necessary skill. 


So I encourage you friends; Fight your good fights. But at the end of the day, I hope that you come home to sit amongst your lavender and your basil, your tomato and your raspberries, and know that these too are your well equipped allies.