The weather where I live has been difficult this spring. It was hot and dry when it should have been cold and wet and then it went cold and not so very wet when it should have been much much warmer. We saw frost way deep into April when last frost should have been early March. The vineyard workers were going nuts pumping water out of the Russian River trying to protect the buds from a frozen premature death. Those who monitor the river’s flow saw a real discernible drop in the water level on those nippy mornings.
I was also frantic trying to protect my tiny, vulnerable 15 tomato starts already in the dirt. I started them in January and they were ready to go out. I was watching the calender - I put the starts out in good faith! I had a plastic green house shelter cover that I faithfully stretched over the seedlings every night and opened back up every morning for weeks and weeks.
One of the theologians I am most in conversation with at the moment (and by “in conversation” I mean I read his book and then think about it a lot and occasionally write sermons and blog entries) writes “Finally, participating in Community Supported Agriculture provides not only an opportunity to enjoy the abundance of the harvest but also the chance to share in the disappointment of a dry season when the crops fail for lack of rain. This is one truth that we would all do well to remember and to acknowledge before every meal: despite it’s apparent regularity and abundance on our supermarket shelves, food is indeed a precarious and therefore precious commodity.” (Daniel G. Deffenbauch, Learning the Language of the Fields: Tilling & Keeping as Christian Vocation, 2006 Cowley Publications, pg 193)
I have the good fortune of living within a 1/2 mile of a CSA, one of the oldest in my area. They’ve had a tough spring. They grow quite a few more than 18 tomato starts and they can’t baby the plants in the same way I can. Still, their season is opening back up again. I think about the hungry months of previous generations. It isn’t just January or February but can run deep into April or May I think before food is ripe enough for harvest. At least that is what I think about when I live here in Northern California.
Time has passed and this week it looks like we’re getting back into the range of “normal” for Northern California but one of the questions on the table is - What exactly is normal anyway? Weather reports are very existential in their Today, Tomorrow and not much beyond that way of looking at things. So what part of this second year of not enough rain and late running frosts belongs to the chaotic calculations of clouds and wind and what belongs to the deeper climate shifting that is going on?
This morning I was doing some garden meditation & tending (known as watering, pulling weeds, and observing the general state of affairs) and I looked up to see this:
And these:
And then I took a step back to see this:
It looks like babysitting the tomato starts has paid off. I look forward to tomato sauces and salads. I’m nursing the basil plants along, I want to make my own mozzarella and then have one of the signs of God’s deep and loving creativity: mozzarella, tomato and basil salad with a touch of olive oil...And I will know these tomatoes. I know their dirt and their water. And I will know that I am lucky because not only do I have food - I have the room and the resources to grow it. And the ability to go to the store if, for whatever reason and there are still many, the crop fails.
A few years ago I had the chance to travel through Italy for the first time. I noticed in the cities that almost every balcony had at least one tomato plant. I notice “claimed” gardens alongside the train tracks where someone has come and farmed the open space. Everyone, it seemed, grew something (if only one thing) of their own food. I wondered what that meant to how they cooked and ate their food. I wonder what it meant when growing their own food meant hauling water a significant length of distance.
I also think about everyone who doesn’t have access to dirt or seeds or water and who are returning from the market empty handed because what food that does exist costs too much. I remember walking into a store in a neighborhood in Pretoria, South Africa where the shelves were almost all empty. I wondered how that neighborhood got by. I noticed a lot of things on that trip in South Africa like how the children sat next to the window to read their school books because there was no electricity.
This is only my third season of planting seeds in the short, dark days of January in anticipation of sun-warm red-sweet tomatoes in July. It such an amazing thing and I can’t get over it. I put little dead looking things in dirt and bury it. Then one morning while pouring water into the coffee carafe, I see my first tiny little white seeding just pulling itself up out of the dirt. First leaves start out folded tight but soon quickly spread out to catch a light.
This is holy - this is God at work - and this happens over and over again. Seeds want to grow. And because I tend them, because I till and keep and watch and learn, I also learn not only how plentiful my food is - but also how these plants and I need each other, how we are woven together in God’s still creating work.
We are woven together. I want the kids who sit by the window to enjoy tomatoes or squash or braai the occasional piece of fine meat. I hope they are okay, I hope their families have found ways to keep eating. I will never know.
At any rate, I am growing my own tomatoes (and some onions and some lettuce and some herbs and peas and maybe some peppers and for sure some potatoes) and so far, it’s going okay. It’s not going to solve the world food shortage. But it leaves a few more tomatoes in the market for someone else - and in-between what I grow and what I buy from the local farms I am joining others in “...yet another way to offer a resounding “No” to the agricultural hegemony now being endured in nearly every part of the world,” Deffenbaugh writes earlier on page 193.
“In this sense,” Deffenbaugh tells us, “eating locally is one of the most political activities that we can engage in on a daily basis.”
How is it going in your garden? What plants have you started? What part of the season are you in? What is your favorite home-grown food? What have you learned from tilling and keeping in your particular place? Where is God in this for you?
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Anitra is a freelance writer and surprised gardener in Northern California. A graduate of San Francisco Theological Seminary, Anitra is a certified Candidate for Ministry of the Word and Sacrament and it looking forward to seeing everyone at the giant church picnic we call the 218th PC(USA) General Assembly in just a few short weeks
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