We've decided to have a little fun with the political taglines of the day. And just like politics, we have an agenda and we want your support.
We're not going to ask you to choose between red and blue. We can love all of the colors - as in rich brown soil, bright yellow squash, glossy aubergine eggplants, chartreuse green tomato plants, deep orange pumpkins, creamy white cauliflower, golden peppers, soft pink roses and buttery yellow sunflowers.
We love growing clean food. We love growing flowers that are safe for our pollinators. And we love doing all of this in a garden that we know is safe for our family, our pets, and the wildlife that visits there.
Our agenda is to get everyone united working to #MakeAmericaOrganicAgain!!
America has a rich organic heritage that goes back thousands of years to the ancient pueblos of the Southwest and reaches forward in time to the beginnings of commercial agriculture in the New World.
Our ancestors produced food crops, fiber crops, dye plants and medicinal herbs using only what we now call organics. They employed minerals, manure, wood ash, charcoal, gypsum, bone, and blood. They recycled crop waste and animal waste back to the soil. They utilized cultural techniques like the Three Sisters plantings of corn, beans, and squash, and practiced crop rotation schemes. It worked beautifully for over 10,000 years.
Then came the industrial age and the population began to shift from the farm to the city. There were more mouths to feed with less labor to feed them. The necessity arose to find a less labor intensive way to provide nutrients required to produce crops.
Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers appeared in the first decade of the 1900's. By the end of World War 2, America had become dependent on synthetic fertilizers in commercial agriculture. We also saw agriculture change. Mono-cropping grew rapidly, livestock feeding practices changed, and farming itself became increasingly mechanized. Synthetics also made their way into suburbia as an inexpensive way to maintain the perfect rectangle of weed-free, pest-free, emerald green lawn.
It seemed like a golden age, and in terms of growth and technical advancement it certainly was. Diverting the physical and intellectual resources of the nation from agriculture to industrialization and technology enabled many of the advancements and creature comforts we enjoy today. But there has been a cost.
We are seeing the toll that the shift in agricultural and horticultural practices has taken on human health, livestock health, and the environment. It's time to examine those practices and make the necessary changes to remedy the damage done.
There are those who claim that the damage is permanent and cannot be reversed. I understand the reasons for their pessimism, I just don't share it. The earth has an amazing capacity to heal! I have seen it myself as damaged soil is brought back to life, as polluted water is restored to health.
We can't make those changes at every level at once. It would be nice, but it just doesn't work that way. Activism is important, but our activism cannot afford to be violent, strident, or accusatory - those behaviors are contradictory to the nature of our cause.
We are asking people to be kind to the earth, kind to the plants that feed us, kind to the environment in which we raise our families. So we have to lead with kindness.
- We can lead by example.
- We can lead by teaching.
- We can lead by spreading the word.
- We can lead by inviting others to join us, and by showing them how.
- We can lead by spending our dollars with those who share our philosophy.
- We can lead by raising our children in such a manner that organic living is second nature to them - that they know no other way.
- We can lead by creating a vast network of like-minded consumers, businesses, and producers.
The organic movement has been growing steadily for decades, and we celebrate that. But we would like to reach people who may not realize how much these practices affect their lives. We would also like to use one more way to make our voices heard by the legislators who continually favor the deep pockets of the chemical giants over the health and safety of the people.
We are inviting everyone to join us by using the hashtag #MakeAmericaOrganicAgain. Use it in your social media - blogs, posts, tweets. Use it in emails, in advertising, wear it, say it, live it, do it, teach it, preach it!
We have seen so many silly things go viral. Isn't it worth it to try to take something this important as far as we can?
Edit 02/15/17 - Like all good ideas that float out there on the ether, it seems that this hashtag is out there in at least one place already. We found it at http://sarasorganiceats.com/make-America-organic-again/. Good for Sara! It doesn't seem to have taken off for her, but maybe if more of us use it, we can see a difference. We would love to see a business use it to print some caps or shirts.
I think we have to add another season with a new name to the Gulf Coast gardening vernacular – “Un-Winter”. It seems that is what the winter of 2015-2016 is turning out to be.
Drones are driven out before the onset of winter. They have no hive duties and are just an extra mouth to feed. Nature is tough. Drones reappear in spring, when the hive is ready to expand and the swarming season approaches when they are needed to mate with new queens.
Bees are still in the news. We are continuing to lose too many hives to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). CCD has had a whole host of theories attached to it since the term was coined. Some of them seem a bit outrageous, such as an “Aids-like” bee virus. Some seem more plausible, like common agricultural pesticides. Scientists are still working on the problem, but it will be some time before conclusions can be made with any accuracy.
