Garden Tower Update: Mistakes Were Made

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

Time for an update on our vertical gardening project. When last I posted about the Garden Tower, everything was growing robustly and looking smart.

I hate to say it, but that was kind of the high point of the season. The plants have not grown as vigorously as I’d hoped since that photo session.

Our Garden Tower in mid-September: Not bad but not great. And this is its good side.

Today there are five tomatoes just about ready to pick, but the plant looks pitiful. I cut off most of the grim stuff a few weeks ago.

Not sure what kind of maters these are; the plant was a sucker from a friend’s tomato patch, and she didn’t label it.

On the bright side, we’ve had several cucumbers, as well as snippings of basil, parsley, and kale. I’ve also harvested a few small beets from the top (with lovely greens)—and more are still growing.

The peppers have produced some sad little specimens, but then again we didn’t expect much, having planted them so late in the summer. I was excited to see peas and green beans, till I realized that the yield was going to be quite lean, barely a handful each. I guess one would need to plant almost a whole tower of legumes to get a “crop.”

Sadly the plants have just not grown very robustly. But the Tower setup isn’t to blame. My mistakes:

I planted immediately after filling the barrel with the soil mixture. When I watered everything in, the soil sank a couple inches. This caused the plantings in the side holes to become quite leggy as they reached for sunlight. In retrospect, I probably should have watered well first, allowed everything to settle, and then planted. That might have given them a better start.
Leggy amaranth and kohlrabi
I neglected to apply the weekly liquid fertilizer suggested by the literature that came with the barrel. Said literature was buried on my desk until recently. Oops. (After the first month this is supposed to be unnecessary as the worms do their work. But I imagine that fertilizing during those first crucial weeks would have given the plants a needed boost.)
I overcrowded the side pockets, planting more than one seed. I told myself I would remove all but the strongest seedling later, and I did some thinning, but not nearly enough. I just didn’t have the heart to do it. I bet they would have grown bigger with less competition.
Overcrowded chard
I overfilled the center tube with veggie scraps at the very beginning: In my excitement over this new worm farming adventure, I filled it to the top instead of to the suggested one-third level. I don’t know if this was a factor or not. (We’ll see how it goes when we harvest worm castings!)

One point of pride: my daily hand picking of cabbage worms at the height of their infestation seems to have saved my kale plants. However, it was too late for the kohlrabi and cabbages, which have not progressed beyond seedling size. I’m told that an application of Bt and some ladybugs would eliminate these little munchers, so we’ll keep that in mind for next year.

It may have been another misstep to mix our compost into the potting soil, given how much trouble we’ve had with diseases in our tomato plants. I hated to see the tomato transplant succumb to the same yellowing and crispy leaves we’ve had the last several years in our regular beds. But: no blossom end rot; the tomatoes themselves are so far looking luscious.

We can’t do anything about the soil, short of dumping it out and starting over, and I’m not willing to do that. But the other issues are all learning points for the next growing season. With gardeners, it’s all about next year!

Working with Nature to Sustain Life

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

There’s a fatal flaw in the traditional definition of sustainability—meeting today’s needs without jeopardizing future generations’ ability to meet their own needs.

The problem? This notion leaves out every species besides homo sapiens.

The truth is, “Human beings don’t sustain shit,” sustainability consultant Brandon Pitcher declares. “Nature sustains us. We fool ourselves into thinking we sustain the planet, but it’s the other way around.”

But Fritjof Capra’s view of sustainability is more integrated:

“A sustainable human community is designed in such a manner that its ways of life, technologies, and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature’s inherent ability to sustain life.”

By Alaricmalabry (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

Pitcher, a certified practitioner of ZERI (Zero Emissions Research & Initiatives, a global network seeking solutions to world challenges), spoke at the Irvington Green Hour Tuesday night. He gave two scenarios of solutions patterned after nature’s wisdom.

The Power of Shrooms
The first involves using mushrooms to address multiple issues, such as in the case of an invasive species troubling poverty-stricken parts of Zimbabwe. There water hyacinths choke waterways, to the point that people can’t take their boats down the river, jeopardizing their livelihoods in an area already strained by high rates of HIV.

However, once harvested, dried, and sun-sterilized, this invasive species is ideal food for mushrooms. Villagers take the work on, and native mushrooms thrive on this biomass. Reintroducing mushrooms as a food source demonstrates how tasty and nutritious these powerhouses are—and they can provide enough protein to sustain a community in two to three weeks, Pitcher says.

Mushrooms also figure in food security efforts in Colombia, where the coffee plant forms a substrate for edible fungi. Typically 99.8 percent of coffee is thrown away or burned on its way to our morning cuppa. But “waste” is opportunity.

Coffee Plant, by Jo N, via flickr Commons

The Wisdom of Water
Pitcher’s second example is a natural way to treat wastewater.

In Indiana, 92 cities, including my hometown, have antiquated combined sewer overflows (CSOs).

Combined sewer overflow effects, by Christopher Zurcher, via flickr Commons

Never heard of a CSO? You’re lucky. Here whenever it rains a fraction of an inch, raw sewage combines with stormwater runoff and runs straight into waterways. So pathogens and toxic chemicals are dumped into my neighborhood’s Pleasant Run and other sweet little streams.

The remediation plan involves drilling enormous pipes deep underground to hold the excess sewage. To Pitcher, this represents a wasted opportunity—and a sad ignorance about the way water naturally purifies.

“Water does not move in a straight line in nature,” he points out. Its natural flow creates vortexes that clean it. “It’s very ignorant of us to think we can move water through pipes in straight lines and think that water’s going to be healthy.”

An integrated system of rain gardens and wetlands harnesses the power of algae to treat wastewater. In Indy, such a system could have resulted in a decentralized network, providing jobs and clean water in perpetuity, Pitcher believes.

For more information, see the ZERI site, or The Blue Economy—or attend Pitcher’s upcoming sessions at Trade School Indy.

A Beautiful Indebtedness

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

I’ve been reading Rebecca Solnit’s latest resonant book The Faraway Nearby, and every day there’s a new discovery—about writing, about alienation, about the uses of stories. This morning’s passage evoked the web of interrelatedness and care that can happen among neighbors and friends.

In the author’s case, a cancer diagnosis showed her how much goodwill she had banked. People came from everywhere to help her.

She reflects:

“Before money…people didn’t barter, but gave and received as needs and goods ebbed and flowed. They thereby incurred the indebtedness that bound them together, and reciprocated slowly, incompletely, in the ongoing transaction that is a community.”

In some parts of the world, surely this beautiful indebtedness is still the norm. In my neighborhood, it’s making a steady return, in many small ways.

Some intertwined examples from this past week: I put a call out for dill on the Facebook Neighbors Garden page, offering other herbs in exchange. I’d planted dill, but the black swallowtail caterpillars ate every single sprig of it.

Black swallowtail caterpillars happily chewing up my dill earlier this summer

Black swallowtail caterpillars enthusiastically chewing through my dill supply earlier this summer

I wasn’t too sad about the loss, knowing the beauty that would come of it—until I saw the enticing baby cucumbers at the farmers market and ended up buying three pounds’ worth. I wanted to make a crock of pickles.

Happily, Amy of Fraudulent Farmgirl fame offered her unused dill. Over the weekend I biked over to harvest some, using most of it for pickling and borscht.

On that same bike trip, I stopped at Laura’s to unload some goodies on her hens. That morning I had cut back my severely cabbage worm-infested collards. I brought over the collard leaves, creepy crawlies and all, for the chickens‘ enjoyment. Laura sent me home with heirloom tomatoes and a photograph of the hens posing for a family portrait.

Laura’s contented flock

Today Dawn Facebooked her own plea for dill, and since I had some left, I took it down to her house on my morning dog walk. Dawn put three things into a blue cloth bag of mine that was at her house from some earlier exchange. I came home with:

a salsa wrap made from her dehydrated tomatoes
grape juice from another neighbor’s unused Concord grapes (Dawn and I had picked the grapes Monday while catching up on life)
some maca powder, having mentioned in passing that I’d run out

I promptly put the maca in a green drink, the one I’m sipping right now. It also contains: frozen blueberries (brought back from Michigan by Anna), whey (received from Corinna down the street who makes her own Greek-style yogurt), lettuce (from farmers market), and kale (from my garden).

To add further depth to this web of connection: Laura was the source of my kale seedlings, a late-summer addition to my garden and currently the focal point of my daily worm-picking meditation. I no longer squish or stomp the worms while grimacing and/or squealing. I save them for Laura’s hens. The very hens that supply my eggs.

Writing this, I’m realizing my good fortune: my indebtedness extends even beyond my human neighbors.

What precious debts have you incurred in your community?

My Garden Tower, One Month Later

Posted on August 17, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

It’s been about a month since Judy and I planted our Garden Tower. I last posted about it the day we picked it up from the Good Earth. Time for a post showing the progression.

After some discussion we sited the barrel just outside our back door. We had to sacrifice a few cabbage and collard plants to clear out the space, but it’s the best spot for it. The light color of the siding will reflect light for the plants growing on the back side (though one friend insists we need to innovate some sort of lazy susan apparatus to be able to spin the whole barrel around!)

Filling the Barrel

One of the things I love most about the Garden Tower is its built-in worm composting. I could hardly wait to put saved-up kitchen scraps in there. We also added some semi-decomposed stuff from the compost pile to jump start it.

Adding vegetable matter to the center tube

I bought red wigglers at a feed-and-seed shop, and there were also worms in the soil mix since we used some of our own sifted compost.

Just a handful of worms is enough: they reproduce rapidly.

I had soaked seeds in water overnight to give them a head start. It was great fun poking them into the soil.

Planting Little Marvel peas on the more shaded side.

Plants scavenged from friends and a local nursery helped round it out.

I bought a couple of bell pepper plants that looked like they might survive, and this gorgeous Genovese basil. I also planted parsley starts around the back and a tomato sucker that a gardener friend rooted.

Soon the seeds started to sprout.

Cucumbers were first to sprout. I don’t know if I’ll get any cukes having planted them late in the season, but it’s fun trying.

It was like springtime in July.

Really excited about the amaranth!

After a couple weeks it looked like this. (The cat loves hanging out in the cool shade underneath the tower.)

About 2 weeks after planting.

Today it looks like this!

Check out the cucumber vines, lower right. (And yes that is a cat under there.)

The tomato “sucker” has suckers of its own now, and soon I’ll have to stake it. I’ve harvested basil, parsley, and a few thinnings of the greens. The worms have been chewing through their food, so in a few months I’ll have a different kind of harvest—worm castings.

We’re thinking of rigging up some sort of covering to extend the season. I hope we can keep snipping kale and chard into the winter.

I love my Garden Tower. Of course, it is not necessary to purchase this product to have a similar vertical garden. “You just need a blow torch and a two-by-four,” says one plucky friend. That seems a little more than I want to do, but this Garden Sack design looks to be a good DIY alternative.

Book Offers a Vision of the Possible

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

I’ve had this book out from the library the past few weeks, but after test-driving it, I just emailed Kathleen at Bookmamas to ask her to order it for me. It’s a keeper. Here’s my review:

Wendy Tremayne’s The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-on Living gives a powerful example of a reimagined world in the shape of one couple’s desert homesteading adventures.

Prickly pear, an example of the desert bounty gathered by Tremayne. Photo by Jon Sullivan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Many of us work toward self-sufficiency (or better, community-wide resilience, broadening the circle from homestead to neighborhood). But we’re hampered by the need to make money to prop up our lifestyles, cutting into the time we have to learn and practice new skills. Wendy and partner Mikey demonstrate what is possible by leaping into a completely new way of life. They cash out their retirement accounts (a prescient move, before the crash) and transplant themselves into Truth or Consequences, NM to build a new life.

And build they do: using waste materials and nature’s bounty, they craft a beautiful, abundant, interconnected home base that allows them to live their deepest values.

In contrast to some “green lifestyle” books that focus on giving up luxuries for the earth’s sake, this book offers an exuberant romp through the reclamation of life’s biggest gifts: time, beauty, creativity, connection, purpose. More than just a memoir, it is an invitation to adopt the “maker” mindset. Tremayne’s lyrical descriptions of the spiritual aspects of this journey, coupled with the gorgeous, whimsical artwork and photographs, make this an inspirational book.

The author (who founded Swap-O-Rama-Rama, a community-based textile repurposing/skill sharing extravaganza) observes, “When all of life is for sale, it is a revolutionary act to become a maker of things.” She describes “life in the waste stream” as the ultimate freedom.

“By relying on waste, on what nature provides, and on ourselves, we gave the world a chance to demonstrate abundance. By becoming makers of things, we let our creativity become a transformative link between the free materials available to us and the finished goods that made our lives better.”

She notes that mistakes are part of this process, and describes combatting the inevitable “I can’t do that” by simply taking the next step. For those of us who consider ourselves less than handy (ahem), the book offers both challenge and a roadmap. The last section, in fact, provides concrete steps toward reclaiming the building blocks of life, covering food, power generation, fuel, and shelter.

The physical book itself embodies the new world by its very design, in which art and joy and utility are married into a brilliant manifesto.

In short: Stop what you are doing and order one now from your local independent bookstore, people!

(Can’t wait till your book arrives? Hungry for more after reading it? Check out Wendy and Mikey’s blog at Holy Scrap.)

Elders Building a Healthier Future

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

They meet in Chase Legacy Center’s art room every Thursday for herbal tea and the deeper refreshment of conversation. Known as WeAct (When Elders Act, Communities Thrive), the group began as a natural living discussion circle, and evolved into a discussion/action group.

The weekly gathering of elders is convened by the decidedly youthful Greg Monzel. Today he’s harvested Echinacea and mint from the herb garden tended by the group just outside. With curved shears, he snips the big healthy blooms and fragrant leaves into a blue teakettle as people stroll in.

An herbalist, Greg offers his prodigious knowledge of wildcrafting and permaculture, but participants have a wealth of information too. The discussion moves in spirals, touching on plant medicine, gardening, and other homespun topics.

We explore the identification and uses of lamb’s quarters, with one member noting that this “weed” is high in iron. From another participant, we get the inside scoop on Distelrath Farms’ new cooperative model, which allows the farmer more time to pursue his mission: educating children.

From another, we learn of Taj Mahal’s original plan to be a farmer, and why he changed his mind: “He couldn’t figure out how you could keep from being poisoned by putting poison on the ground.” We lament the way conventional agriculture wages war on the land.

Comfrey root bearing a smile

Greg produces a section of comfrey root dug from his garden. A terrifically tough—and useful—plant, comfrey’s roots extend some 40 feet underground. He cuts the root into tiny pieces to send home with everyone. Each garden can benefit from nutrients pulled up from the depths.

After a while we take cups of bright-tasting tea outdoors to the raised beds designated for WeAct use. There’s the excitement of lifting carrots from the earth. We discuss uses of borage and alfalfa, remedies for mildew, and where to buy a hori hori. Greg urges us to take dill seeds and coriander seeds to plant or eat.

The sky is deep cloudless blue for the first time in days. We stand in the sunshine enjoying the cool morning breeze. It’s the kind of moment that you wish could last all day, and in fact Greg says it is the high point of his week. Too soon, the group disperses.

Harvesting carrots from WeAct's group vegetable bed

Harvesting carrots from WeAct’s shared vegetable bed

Though we don’t visit it on this day, WeAct also maintains a vegetable plot on the adjoining vocational high school campus near the Colonel’s Cupboard, a student-run restaurant. The group supports the school’s horticulture and culinary programs in gardening and preparing homegrown produce.

From the mission statement: “WeAct is an activist organization of elders (and elders in training) who meet weekly for continuing education and community engagement…We consider anyone age 50 and over an elder, though the group is also open to elders in training who may be under 50.”

Among the goals:

to reaffirm the wisdom of community elders
to advocate for the right to home-grown nutrition
to create awareness of community resilience and natural balance

How are the elders (and elders-in-training) in your community manifesting a healthy vision for the future?

Sharing Summer’s Abundance and Summer’s Work

Posted on August 4, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

You never know what might result from posting a request on Facebook. The other day I asked our neighborhood Facebook gardeners’ group if anyone would take my zucchini in exchange for peppers. Because really, how many zukes does one household need? This led to the idea of a veggie swap ‘n share. So I invited any interested gardeners to bring their surplus over yesterday for some trading.

Only a couple folks showed up, but it was just right, and no doubt more will come in the future.

Summer’s abundance shared at the veggie swap. (The eggs are a side deal.)

Julie brought heirloom tomatoes, the only thing she grows. I was thrilled to take some off her hands, since mine are ripening ever so slowly after initially falling prey to blossom end rot. Her cherry tomato variety is called Doctor and rivals my beloved Sungold for sweetness.

As the most ambitious gardener among us, Laura brought a slightly squirrel-chewed pumpkin that needed to be harvested because of an issue with the vine. She had also just picked yellow squash, collards, basil, and more lovely heirloom tomatoes, including a variety called Principe Borghese, reputed to be great for drying. (I’m happy to say these are in my dehydrator as we speak.)

Collards and basil straight from the garden.

I offered the aforementioned Zucchini Explosion, specifically a variety called Cordello, as well as some jalapenos and various herbs. Laura went home with catnip for her kitties (sorry Kitley and Maggie!), sage, and rosemary.

Funny how these things all work out and people go away happy to try something new. I think swapping could be habit-forming.

Clowning with cabbage at last year’s kraut party

On a related note, last summer our kitchen was home base for group preserving efforts, loosely connected to our community garden. With polka music on Pandora, we shredded up several heads of cabbage and packed them in crocks at the Kraut Party.

Kraut Party Action

Later in the season we switched the sound track to the Three Tenors and Andrea Bocelli at the Pesto Party.

And a couple of us got together to make a gazillion varieties of salsa as well, to share with the community at a Salsa Party.

When you try to cook and preserve seasonal produce, summer can be a crazy time, especially if some of the produce comes from your own garden. Most of us don’t live in the kind of multigenerational households that were the rule back in the day. So we don’t have the built-in helpers that our foremothers did. It can get lonesome, toiling away in your kitchen on your own.

So it’s been great fun to turn some of that work into social events.

There’s talk of another Pesto Party, and maybe even a group effort to “put up sweet corn,” as my people say. We can get a boatload of sweet corn from one of our many local growers and just go to town.

Hm. What musical genre would work for a Corn Party?

From the Low Food Chain Chronicles

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

Weeks ago, months really, I pledged to try sardines in an effort to eat lower on the food chain. I went out and bought a tin of skinless, boneless sardines. I asked for your serving suggestions. I browsed recipes. I learned that you can fry them (“the bones get crispy!” said food blogger friend Melissa, which gave me pause), or put them in a potato salad, or mix them into pasta. Or just eat them on a cracker.

I got inspired.

Then I put the tin in the pantry. And there it sat. And whenever I reached in for baking powder or pasta or whatnot, I would think, Oh yeah, sardines, I promised I would eat those. For the blog. And then I would close the door again posthaste.

I am proud to tell you that yesterday I actually pried that sucker open. And I didn’t stop there. I actually ate sardines.

Yesterday’s lunch.

I’m here to report that these little fishies, which feed the farm-raised fish so many of us prefer…really aren’t that bad! The smell is a bit oceanic, but taste is mainly salty, at least when mashed in small (microscopic) amounts on a lovely sesame rye cracker.

I was worried the mouthfeel would be slimy, because just look at the sheen on those puppies. But they were actually quite palatable.

I had lactofermented veggies on the side, figuring two strong flavors would cancel each other out. You can never have too many cultured veggies, and these collards and cabbages were homegrown and -cultured.

Unfortunately I had to move indoors to eat because my cat was so interested in the meal.

“I’d be happy to finish those sardines off for you.” –Kitley

I told myself that if lunch turned out to be a train wreck, I’d put a good taste back in my mouth with dessert: zucchini cornbread baked in the solar cooker. Not just any cornbread but blue cornbread. Over homemade yogurt with organic Indiana blueberries.

Sorry I don’t have a photo for you. I was too excited about eating it to pause and snap.

Meanwhile the salad balanced the sardine experiment nicely. I’ve said it before: I know this isn’t a food blog, but still I must share the ingredients of this super-duper salad:

Grated zucchini, because it’s summer and everything we eat must include zucchini from the garden in some form.
Oxalis, purslane, sorrel leaves, chives, catnip, young dandelion leaves, and possibly other things I can’t remember, gathered from the yard (and the neighbor’s yard, but who’s looking?)
Sungold cherry tomatoes, first of the season and sweet as can be. I’ve waited all year!
Pumpkin seeds toasted in the solar cooker.
Nettle seeds. Herbalist Greg Monzel says these are “one of the only herbs that can restore compromised kidney function,” not that I really need that. And they’re too small to give much more than the teeniest little crunch. But I like using every part of the nettle patch, so I can tell Judy, “I’m still harvesting from it!” when she threatens to whack it down.

What culinary adventures are you having this summer?

Releasing and Emerging

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

Along my street, the sycamores are shedding. Great scrolls of bark pile in drifts around each trunk’s base. The new “skin” is a tender green. It’s like the trees have hit a sudden growth spurt.

Seeing this always makes me wonder what I myself need to release in order to grow.

Sycamore in process of shedding

Lately I’ve been thinking about the concept of emergence, introduced to me by an Ohio group called Simply Living. Emergence happens when networks form around a common vision, allowing powerful social change movements to arise seemingly overnight. Witness the local food movement.

The term also appears in Marjorie Kelly’s book Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution. She contrasts the phenomenon with top-down policies imposed on a community. Instead, change emerges organically at the local level, rooted in community need.

Once again, it’s trusting the power of smallness.

Simply Living notes that emergence requires “staying present with the work at hand, yet paying attention to emerging opportunities.”

It’s a tough thing to discern, in both working groups and in individual endeavors. Clearly we can’t do everything. What to pursue, what to leave aside? Which brings me back to those sycamores.

My own life has taken a few twists of late, leading to surprises and unexpected opportunities—emergence on the microcosmic scale.

Two examples.

I didn’t expect to take on a new cat just now. He appeared on the block, scared and wounded, spatting with the other neighborhood roustabouts. I befriended him, took him for veterinary attention and a certain necessary procedure.

Note the cats playing poker in the “picture window.”

Now Kitley’s fully claimed me—and the little house Judy built for him using (mostly) upcycled materials. He can’t come indoors due to her allergies, so she made him a bachelor pad that’s the envy of the entire Feline Nation, or should be. He lifts my heart, racing up to me to touch noses when I’m puttering outside. He makes me laugh when I’m caught in some bleak mental loop of my own making. And then I’m renewed.

I wouldn’t have thought of keeping him as an outdoor kitty, if not for a friend’s chance comment about home-built cat shelters.

Then there was FoodCon. I was a last minute pinch hitter with foraging and solar cookery tables, which led to a friend recommending me to the organizer of Bluegrass Bioneers. Suddenly I’m a teacher in the “reskilling” portion of the weekend. (Happening Oct. 25-27 in Louisville, KY. Psyched!)

More difficult is the paring away. As I embrace emerging opportunities, I must also release what no longer serves, whether it be plans, possessions, or projects.

I’ve always hated that I can’t do every single project that draws me. “Life constantly reaches out into novelty,” says physicist and systems theorist Fritjof Capra. It also prunes away what is no longer needed. I’m working on allowing space for these twin aspects of growth in my own life.

And you? What’s emerging for you and your community?

Lessons from Sugar Man

Posted on July 21, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

The documentary Searching for Sugar Man came up in conversation with friends last night. If you haven’t seen this Oscar-winning gem, go immediately to your preferred film source and get it. (Immediately after you finish reading this!)

Photo by David Ingram, via Flickr Creative Commons

I won’t give too much away, because the joy of this film is experiencing the discovery. In brief: Rodriguez, a Detroit musician whose lyrics and style rivaled Dylan’s, made two records in the early 70s. Both flopped. End of story—as far as anyone knew in the U.S.

But in sequestered South Africa, where apartheid had a stranglehold, his anti-establishment message galvanized a generation. There Rodriguez became a superstar—and a mystery. Rumors circulated about a dramatic onstage suicide, involving self-immolation or a gun. Because South Africa was cut off from the rest of the world, in those pre-Internet days, there was little to go on. Who was he, and how did he die?

The story unfolds from there.

In our case, the film sparked a discussion about the impossibility of ever knowing the impact of your deeds.

Clayton said he recently talked with his young son about what it means to be a good person, and how important it is to get off your duff and do something. “You can’t just sit around your house and say you’re a good person. You have to get out and make a positive effort.”

And it doesn’t matter if you fail, because the simple fact of your trying may inspire someone else, Clayton believes.

To my mind, “positive effort” could be as simple as a kind word or smile. We don’t know how these little things might bolster someone facing an inward darkness, or outward danger.

I seem to write about this often: that acts we think of as small actually have great power. Most of us, living our lives in defined spaces, consider our influence very small. Our lives seem circumscribed by smallness; we go to and fro, following our routines, taking care of the details that make up a life.

We may feel that we are too insignificant to make a difference in the fate of our planet and our race.

Yet everyone can do small things with great love, and who can know the ripple effect? Especially if we work in tandem with others.

Photo by Lisuebie, via Flickr Creative Commons

The row we plant might be just the encouragement our elderly neighbor needs to start seeds on a windowsill. Which might nudge her granddaughter to visit a farmers market and buy a farmer’s tomatoes, and one of those funny-looking squashes while she’s at it. Maybe she’ll come back in ensuing weeks and bring her children and a friend, buying more locally grown food. Which shows the farmer that his produce is desired, and keeps him from throwing in the towel after a tough summer.

Think about it.

(And seriously, see the film. Then watch the “making of” extra. If you’ve ever been so discouraged that you nearly gave up a dream, you’ll connect to the story behind the film.)

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Shawndra Miller

Giving voice to the world’s remaking

Tag Archives: Local food