The August winds are here which means we're on the cusp of Spring. True winter only visits these parts for a week or two, and then, we start to see jonquils popping through.
There may be a cold snap later in the month, but it wont last long as the soil is already warming and my annual obsession with waiting for the Elm tree leaves to reappear has begun. There's a problem though, the wind is making me uneasy.
This time of year, I'm accustomed to planning what I'm going to plant and making sure I've rotated crops enough. I'm also daydreaming about what to do with the abundance of zucchini that will bless us in late Summer, after the heat has scorched everything, including my spirit.
It feels repetitive, and not as exciting as it once was- although somewhat controllable - this small patch. I know there's lots of work, and of course, there will be warding off invaders and attacks from slugs and fruit fly, but in general, I can expect to plant some things and eat some things that have grown.
This year though, things seem chaotic. Not in the patch, per say, but in my mind and in the wider world. It somehow feels like planting and tending to this little piece of earth is not enough. Maybe the winds have arrived to remind me that I can't ignore the need for significant change any longer.
Yesterday, when pushing my trolley slowly up the aisles, the anxiety inducing fluorescent lighting was illuminating more than just Argentinian garlic and Mexican asparagus.
Here I am in North West NSW, Down Under, wasting hours on a Sunday, selecting vegetables that have been farmed, most probably by farmers from oceans away who are destined to stay poor due to the few multinational corporations who control our food supply. Old news. Obviously. But it made me realise that this is not how I envisaged myself living and eating.
I romanticised the notion of knowing the farmer or grower. Having a farm gate stand to stop by and pick up eggs- or better still, owning that farm gate and stocking it with my bounty for others to enjoy.
I hoped I would be packing up my wicker basket and heading to the farmer's markets twice a week and coming home with an abundance of artisan made, nutritionally dense food that we'd have time to regularly share with friends and family.
I imagined the kids heading off to school with a lunchbox full of homegrown and homemade. Instead I'm rustling around in the glovebox to find a dollar to put in the trolley and chucking in a packet of yoghurt and a twiggy stick and a few berries on a good day. This isn't the homesteading, slow life in the utopian garden (clearly imprinted in my mind) that I've long dreamed of.
I've always thought that you're doing well if you do what you can, grow your own food as much as possible. Don't eat asparagus except in Spring when it's ripe and local and sustainable and seasonal.
Local, sustainable, seasonal. Words we've been hearing to death for years. Lifestyles we've been aspiring toward but a reality that we're no where near- and will not ever be unless there is a shift in global economics, monoculture agriculture and the entire way the post industrialised world works.
So what can we do? Join a commune? Homeschool our kids? Move off grid? Doomsday prep?
All of those options once seemed extreme, but now don't seem extreme enough because even if we chose the path of most resistance, the reality is that the world we live in is geared towards an existence in the 'matrix' where you will go to school, learn what they want to teach you, whilst making sure you have lots of after school activities and sport on weekends, so you're busy and well rounded enough to get into a 'good school' or university.
Then you rack up a HECS/TAFE debt, in a course you've chosen because you 'did ok' in legal studies, which you chose in year 9 because all your friends were taking the same subject. This is when you still believe the world is your oyster.
Then you work in a job 9-5 (more realistically 8-6 + overtime) except for those four weeks when you're lucky enough to be granted permission to take paid leave, as long as no one else is taking leave at the same time and your phone calls and emails can be covered.
You should also have a house that is pinterest worthy, filled with designer cushions and linen bedding. Oh and a pool and maybe a holiday house and two cars and a media room. Don't forget to squeeze in an OS trip every second year.
Do this until you turn 67, by which time you're probably taking a cocktail of pills and are mentally unwell from stress and being socially detached because you spend long hours in front of the computer at work, and hours scrolling on your phone every evening, never able to escape social media or the 24 hour news cycle.
But don't worry- you're about to be rewarded! You can retire and now travel in a caravan for a few years, in between hip replacements, visit the grandkids twice a year or move to the coast and play bridge on a Wednesday. You can also stay 'in touch' with your 'friends' through social media to make sure the weight of comparison is weighing as heavily as it should be.
Of course, there's variations but at the end of the day, we all have to work to pay our rates and taxes and mortgages. Until we die.
And all those years we're working, we're eating food that has either been grown nearby, taken away, processed to something we no longer recognise and then returned into the supermarket with the premium cuts and diverse options going straight to our city cousins.
Logistically, I just can't even fathom the human energy, fuel, environmental costs of living like this- except that Brene Brown illuminates our current day truth very well when she says "We are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history" (also applies to Australia and the UK.)
The 1990's charity advertisement line pops into my head, regrettably more often than it should "The problem is so big- what can I do?"
The answer is, I don't know. And we're kind of going down the meaning of life, matrix, existential crisis, conspiracy theory rabbit hole here, but I really do not know. Do you?
Is it enough to raise a family, work hard, be honest and enjoy a holiday once a year? That doesn't sit right with me but it seems like we collectively want to separately sit in our big houses, on our new couches, with our up to date phones dictating our thoughts and dreams. So far from any real sense or support of community.
And so this morning, I did what I do when I don't really know what else to do. Went into the garden with one of the wee ones, felt the sun on my skin and made a mental list of things I know to be true, things I'm grateful for and things I wish for.
That list isn't as long as it once was but here is today's version so that when the wind howls and makes you feel uneasy and you're questioning what is right and what is enough, you can remind yourself that your own garden isn't the worst place you could be.
Home grown herbs taste best
Long lunches are the ultimate luxury
Sundays should be slow with time to enjoy life
Friends who gift homemade food are the best kind of friends
Dirt under your hands and sun on your skin is cheaper than therapy
The seasons will always change, and August will always bring wind
Children will always remember the food you make for them when they're unwell
You still have time to join a commune and stick it to the man......... (accepting nominations or other suggestions)
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