It began with a garden.
It was a vegetable garden, or a series of them rather, tucked into the sunny spots of our small backyard. I wanted to grow my own food, if only for that incredible feeling of picking a ripe tomato off the vine. I was a bit tomato-obsessed in those days. At one point I had thirty tomato plants. What can I say? Those heirloom seed catalogues got to me.
Then teas joined the mix. And medicinal herbs. And fruit trees. And pollinator flowers. And I discovered a world of teachers.
I learned about the healing potential of nature and gardens. I learned about plants coexisting with each other, and how inter-planting species led to healthier plants. I discovered the healing potential in herbal teas and gradually the thirty tomato plants became a tea garden. Then I began selling tea blends.
From the beginning, it was never just about building a business. It was my human attempt to translate the wisdom of the gardens that had brought these teas to life. It’s why I named the tea business Seed of Life.
It was about nourishing health from the ground up.
Which brings me to the woman who inspired this journey. My grandmother.
My grandmother was an avid gardener and a lover of plants. Her green thumb could coax any plant to grow, and she and my grandfather had a greenhouse all the years I knew them. I loved that greenhouse. I can still see the geraniums on the wire tables, and feel the cool packed-dirt floor beneath my bare feet. I can smell the earthiness of green and growing things, and feel that warm, moisture-drenched air in my lungs. The very air seemed to shimmer with life.
She had this saying that I never forgot. She’d say, Give a fifty cent plant a five dollar hole and you’ll have a five dollar plant.
That saying stayed with me forever, and every time I plant anything, from a seed to a tree, I find myself whispering those words. I dig the hole just a little bit deeper and mix in just a little more compost or peat moss, softening and enriching this hard red clay soil of mine just a little bit more. I smile, remembering her and missing her. I smile because she will never know how much those words of hers impacted my life.
Maybe she does know.
She was the inspiration behind the name Seed of Life. Nourishing the roots of my life has always been the light behind everything I do here.
And so it should come as no surprise that I found myself deeply interested in soil health. I began to understand that the health of the plant is dependent on the health of the soil. And once you see that link you can’t unsee it.
I began to learn about feeding the soil. Using plants with deep taproots to break up hard clay soil. Composting. Without knowing what it was called, I had begun practicing what is called regenerative agriculture on a very tiny, very primitive backyard scale.
And then I began to notice something. I noticed that the farmland around me was being “fertilized” with what is known as toxic sludge. If you want to understand what toxic sludge is you can read the post What Is Toxic Sludge?
At first I looked away. Surely the powers-that-be knew this was going on and surely it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Surely the farmers who knew so much more than me wouldn’t do something that harmed the soil. But since I regularly drove past a farm that was being used to store and spread this product, I couldn’t look away. Finally, unable to shake my concern, I began to read about it. And once I began reading about it I couldn’t stay silent.
Spreading waste that still carries heavy metals, chemicals, pathogens, and pharmaceuticals on our farmland is not a sustainable practice. But I could see that it was going to continue and I saw no good future for the health of our soil, our food, and our water.
And so I began writing about it and talking about it. I found that people simply didn’t know about it. But no one I talked to locally, from neighbors to farmers, thought it was a good idea. So I kept writing about it. I kept talking about it.
I didn’t want to start a movement.
I’m just a gardener and a mom. But those two things have shown me the vital importance of nourishing the soil from which we come. It’s not just about producing food to stop the hunger pangs so we can keep going about our busy lives. It’s about producing food that nourishes us and heals us, profoundly and holistically, as Tish Harrison wrote in Liturgy of the Ordinary:
“Food has so much to teach us about nourishment,
and as a culture we struggle with what it means
to be not simply fed,
but profoundly and holistically nourished.”
– Tish Harrison
Heal yesterday. Nourish today. Tomorrow matters.
These words have been on my business cards and website since this small tea business began. I didn’t know then how vital they would be to this movement. We cannot heal yesterday if we don’t acknowledge what we have done to our soil. We can’t nourish today if our soil is sick. Tomorrow, and next year, and ten years from now, our soil will be even sicker if we don’t make changes now.
Give a fifty cent plant a five dollar hole and you’ll have a five dollar plant. My grandmother knew it begins with the soil.
Give our soil good food and we will have good food.
Give our earth healing and we will have healing.
Can we do this for the coming generations?
Read the post What Can I Do? or return to the homepage.
