October

The rains are out and the bugs have returned to swiftly coup de grace my suffering crops. As I wait out my last two healthy plants - a crookneck and the pumpkin, I've been thinking of what I really grew in this garden. I guess it doesn't matter - I wasn't counting on any of the food, and I've only begun an understanding of how to incorporate a seasonal harvest into our diet. It only takes a broccoli crown or a couple garden tomatoes in the fridge to realize how artificial our diets really are. I can figure out the best burger in town, go 20 miles to pick it up, bring it home, eat it and clean up easier than I can figure out what the heck to do with a tomato.

I always see gardening as just a piece of a much more encompassing effort. I say, "Gardener" but I think, "Homesteader." Farm animals, with meat and dairy and breeding, compost, greenhouses, outhouses, woodstoves, fruit trees and berry bushes... It all works and interrelates so well. To grow a tomato in a bucket on the porch...is gardening...is to miss the point of gardening. Getting back to our human nature, decoupling ourselves from an irresponsible/unsustainable system, taking ownership of our diets, this is gardening and homesteading in general. I don't think a tomato bucket has much to do with this, but then some think nothing less than a team of work horses, or 100 head of cattle has much to do with it either. I wonder what trait determines where on that scale, if anywhere, a person falls.

October is coming, heralded by my birthday, and ushering in months of short days full of gloomy rain. My spring/summer (Oregon only has two seasons) had plenty of bright spots, but I didn't reach all my goals and spent much of my time/money laying (hopefully solid) foundations for the future. Our garden was the exact same way. I see this winter as a time to come back to present, and if we're still here come spring, well it'll be time to build some memories.




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