Grow Nothing Gardening

I just talked to a friend in New Hampshire who lost a few rows of lettuce to a gopher one evening and her compost bin to a bear. - I tried to comfort her while klüchscheißing about my radical wild collection ideas at the same time. In part it is an exhaustive rationalization for laziness and in part I really feel i am right. - In any case I didn't get quite enough of it out then, so I'll rant a bit about it here.

'In the vast majority of cases a person will be happier if he has no rigid and arbitrary notions, for gardens are moodish, particularly with the novice. If plants grow and thrive, he should be happy; and if the plants that thrive chance not to be the ones that he planted, they are plants nevertheless, and nature is satisfied with them.' ― L. H. Bailey, Manual of Gardening

I remember in Witzenhausen I was invited to look at a friends newly planted garden in the early spring, the last frost had just passed and he had put out a number of seedlings in the fresh tilled earth. - There they were, tine tender and helpless little baby plants in a sea or upturned bare earth. - I looked up to the edge of the garden and saw fresh spring green nettles and dandelions bulging from the hedge, practically begging to be part of a dinner. I thought about the nutrition available there in that readily abundant food source that nature had provided without any effort on the part of these hard working young farmers and I laughed.

I say we should just eat what grows rather than growing what we want to eat. Why are we dong all of this work?

"I do not particularly like the word 'work.' Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done." ― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Just for the sake of having it in more places I am reprinting the last part of the 'Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front' by Wendell Berry from his book 'The Country of Marriage'. 

...

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.