I want to tell you the story of the root children. Are you ready? Come sit.

Gardening for me, doesn’t feel like a job. The plants do most of the work and the way that I do it, I just get to come out and reap the bounty most of the time. And kale, how much was that? Kale was? Life is just so hectic and there’s always so much movement, and to have a place that you have to go, where you have to like kneel down on the ground, it’s so grounding for me and I think we’re all happier.

Creating those practices where you actually have to pause and touch the earth I think are really important. Anybody can garden. Every single person that has was ever born to this earth has ancestors who grew food because you have to eat. And they foraged, they hunted, but people grew food in all cultures all over the world. So everybody has kind of a seed within them of that memory, and it’s really important to connect to that and just put it in the ground. It’s not necessarily a gift that you get, it’s the earth begging you back and asking you to put your seed, put your intention and put your observation down to the ground, because this is where life comes from. If we pause to plant those seeds, so much will grow.

Tomato seeds are very small, so often I’ll start them all together or here’s some in six packs, here’s some in two inch pots, and I started these in February. So once it gets to be about this big, the roots will start to come out the bottom and then you have to transplant them because they’re not ready to go outside until mid-May. So I transplanted all these tomatoes and I’m looking at upwards of 800 tomatoes here, which is good, because I really like tomatoes, but I also have a lot of friends who like tomatoes. So I often sell the plants and share them with my people. I do have a little bit of borage, celery, marigold, zinnias. This is this calendula and this calendula. Fennel is back there.

What is that? Cottonwood? I love this game. Plant ID. This little garden has grown quite a bit since I moved in. I moved in 10 years ago and my husband had actually bought the house before we got married. This is the fifth of an acre and though it’s in the country, it’s a very small amount of land. And I was starry-eyed and ambitious.

I’m 33 years old and I said, “Let’s just sell this place and we’ll buy a farm because that’s what I really want,” and he said, “Well, I’ve already paid quite a bit on this house. I’m not quite ready to sell it.” So I went on to have my first child a couple years later and I was so grateful that we didn’t have a farm because there’s nothing I hate more than failing and when you have too much to take care of it’s inevitable something’s going to fall to the wayside.

Now that I have 10 years living in this home and three children and a long practice of living in this place, now I still really want to farm, but I’m humbled knowing that I can barely take care of this tiny little garden and this tiny little family and this tiny little space. So I like to feel successful. So small is beautiful and maximizing the space that you have is beautiful because then you feel successful. I feel so abundant in this garden and frankly, if I lived on a farm, I would probably feel tired. It’s not so much about you, it’s about the earth is asking it of you. So you’re just doing what your mother’s telling you, so it’s important to listen to that and to let her guide you because the information’s all there. And when you pay attention, you see how it all works.

Thank you, Eva. We love to be together. To grow is innate. All life wants to live. It’s really time to repair and reclaim and revitalize our relationship to the land, our relationship to our own capacity and our own nourishment and our relationship to community. And when you grow one little thing, you see how generous the earth forces are and how abundant, and not only is it humbling, but it’s a deep teaching and it makes you want to be regenerative and generous as well.

So my role in the community right now is to get as many people growing food as possible and as many little baby plants to safe gardens as possible because that’s my purpose in life, is to help people grow. The honey factory… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8… 8 quarts plus. When you let your garden be your clock and show you the seasons go round and round, you always know what time it is. So I feel like the seeds that I save from 2020 will be resilient and wise. It’s been quite a year and if we’ve made it through this year, I feel like we can make it through anything.