June 30th, 2020
What’s in your share?
Kale
Snap Peas
Salad Mix
Zucchini
Basil
Cabbage
Curried Pickles (Zucchini, Turnips, Water, Garlic Scapes, Curry Powder, Chili Flakes) Keep Refrigerated!
Gray area. The space between. On the fence. Walking the line. Homeostasis. These concepts have similar meanings, but have no particular definitions. They fall somewhere within a linear spectrum; but occupying neither end. As western industrialized humans, one of the first concepts we teach our children is that of opposites. Hot/cold, on/off, open/closed; definitive and easy to explain by contrasting the two. Explaining what falls in the middle is a lot more difficult. This is partly because our language is merely an attempt to translate what our senses allow us to perceive, but also because what falls in the middle is usually extremely complex and rarely understood.
Take the jar of fermented vegetables in your share this week and observe the cloudy brine and tangy flavor. This is the result of fermentation, a process that not only extends the shelf life of a vegetable, but also promotes much more nutritive complexity than raw (and many cooked) vegetables. The vegetables are no longer alive and growing, but they are not dead and rotting either. Before microscopes could show us the microorganisms that are breaking down the sugars in the vegetables and producing lactic acid and carbon dioxide, humans knew there was something happening in the brine that made their food last longer and taste more complex. The explanation of what was happening wasn’t important; it was important to recognize that something was happening.
Our soil is another place where gray areas exist. Upon taking a quick look at a garden, you first notice the crops. You might notice how the garden is designed, maintaining a certain aesthetic to appeal to the senses. You might even notice the weeds, and how they don’t belong. Crops that belong/crops that don’t belong. But regardless of the crops and whether they belong or don’t, there is much more activity happening below the surface of the soil than on the top. Just as in the process of fermentation, microbes and tiny fungal networks make the soil a place where plants can grow. They provide hormones the plants need and air space for the roots by moving slowly through the soil. Once we have this realization, the idea of using machinery or even a simple hoe to disturb the soil and its inhabitants suddenly seems violent and disruptive, and necessitates rethinking how we work our soil.
As a culture that was founded on dualities, its engrained in us to think in terms of either/or, this/that, yes/no. Once we allow ourselves to think outside of definitives and to accept that something can be both this AND that, we can take a closer look into the gray areas and embrace what they have to show us.