Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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A MANIFESTO FOR SEEDS
http://www.kootenay.com/%7Eaurora/free.html

         We are seed users, seed eaters, seed growers...all of us.  We have 
been wrapped in a world of seeds for eons, since long before agriculture. In 
hunger we ate the bird that ate the seeds; in happy accident we brewed the 
beer from spoiled and worthless seeds; in unwitting service to the plant we 
transported its seeds on our trouser cuffs.  We slobber over ear corn and eat 
our Wheaties.  It's in our language: We are of our parents' seed, our 
ancestors' seed, Adam's seed ultimately.  We are born into, thrive in, die 
in, a seed sowing, seed garnering heritage.  To deny the status of the sacred 
to these time capsules, these enfoldments of life we call seeds is to court 
foolish disaster.  We have always known this.
        But...now they're messing with our seeds.  The power grabbing 
corporations, the fascistic governments,  propose in their arrogance and 
disrespect to irradiate...manipulate...defructify...monopolize and further 
commodify our ancient birthright, our real wealth: SEEDS.   We are strong 
when we have our seeds, and they know this.   They would enslave us and they 
would use as leverage the seeds we cherish, the seeds that nourish us.  What 
we would pass on to the seventh generation as bridegift they seize as 
strategy.   They would put a price on the priceless and sell it back to us.

        Leave our seeds alone.  Leave our seeds in the hands of the people 
who feed us...the family, the clan, the village group.  The profession of 
"seedsman" was created only 130 years or so ago.  Perhaps it was an 
aberration to try to  centralize, and then commidify, a process that had 
before been disbursed in village gardens, homestead gardens, middens and 
small fields.  Grandmothers and Great-uncles collected, watched over, 
cherished the seeds that came down to them.  Grew them out with love and 
patience and infinite care.  Grandmother's seeds... grandmother's 
blessing...passed from generation to generation.  Reckon three generations to 
a century and 150 centuries in the history of agriculture and you have 
several hundred generations of seed gathering folk, seed saving grandcestors, 
passing on precious seeds to descendants.  There is memory encapsulated in 
this line of life stretching so far back.  Feelings are there too...feelings 
of gratitude to Gaia, of holding dear, of well wishing to the future 
generations, feelings of faithfulness...feminine feelings.

        The memory is right there in the seed, in our cells, in the 
mitochondrial DNA passed down the feminine line.  When I touch my seeds I tap 
the memory that is there, instinctive wisdom almost lost, beaming itself into 
our consciousness just when it is most needed.

John Trudell said: " It's about our D and A. Descendants and ancestors. We 
are the descendants and we are the ancestors.
D and A, our DNA, our blood, our flesh and our bone, is made up of the metals 
and the minerals and the liquids of the earth. We are the earth. We truly, 
literally and figuratively are the earth. Any relationship we will ever have 
in this world to real power-the real power, not energy systems and other 
artificial means of authority-but any relationship we will ever have to real 
power is our relationship to the earth." (1)


        Seeds are concentrated wealth.  Seeds are worth far more than we pay 
for them now, in this aberrant commodity trade.   You can pack in a suitcase 
$10,000 worth of garden seeds in any variety you choose.  The slavemasters 
and their propagandists would have us believe that money is power and, since 
they have plenty of it, that they are in control.  They don't want us to have 
that suitcase, to be free to leave and plant elsewhere; free to stay and 
plant many gardens, feed many people with real food.

        If we are staunchly of the Earth, her power is ours to neutralize and 
transmute the evil work of the authority-mongers, those without conscience.  
We can do this with  life enhancing actions.  Repeat.  Life-affirming actions 
override, overwhelm, the lifeless.  Always the great stone temples of the 
arrogant become topsoil for living systems.  It's something the corporations 
and governments fail to appreciate.  Their authority rests on entropic 
processes, explosions, coercions,  cultural lies.  They cannot take into 
account the power of life, the connectedness of life.  They would have us 
forget where we come from...so we can be entertained and exploited and 
addicted to their cheap dream, their gadgets and their ersatz food.  If we 
are staunchly of the Earth we have access to the strength of the generations, 
the ancestory, to help us put life and affirmation in the places where 
death-dealing had been.  We can REMEMBER from where our power comes.  Let us 
plant gardens.  Let us plant trees.  Let us tend cows.

        Let us join Wendell Berry's "Mad Farmers Liberation Front."  No dues. 
 No meetings.  You just have to be clever.  Don't be depressed, be clever.

Our weapons are our  tools...
Our ammunition is our seeds...
Our fuel is our sacred intent to do right by the future of life on the 
Planet...
Our marching song is  the thrumming of memory in our cells.
        We march in concert, but we do not march en masse.   Our aim is not 
to dominate or overpower.  There has been enough domination and power 
grubbing.   Rather, our aim is service.  Each of us has a plot of earth to 
serve, our own elementals and devas to consult...intuition that speaks in us. 
 We know how to surrender to  the task, to the plants and soil, in order to 
earn our harvest.  We bend to it in joy and service, each individual one of 
us mustering pure intent, a gutsy laugh, with the power of life upholding us.

        Let us be clear.  There is no money in this, only sustenance.  This 
passing forward of seed on the family or clan level is a matter of right 
livelihood, not of commerce.

        And right livelihood brings joy.  If I can feed myself, my family, a 
few others perhaps when surplus appears, then I have done something REAL.  
Something subversive.  I am in touch with my power, and my delight.

        JOY...What if the picture that's been drawn of medieval peasant life 
as basically "Nasty...Brutish...Short" is a cultural con job put out by the 
rationalists and the materialists, the ones who shortly would have something 
to sell us?  What if life on a subsistence level has joys and satisfactions 
as well as challenges?  What if people had time to laugh and sing?  What if 
there were still people in the world who could catch the memory of this and 
show it to us??

       A friend tells me about life in the Philippines, far back on the rural 
islands...tells how, when two rice threshers or donkey drivers meet and begin 
to talk, they're laughing most of the way through the conversation.   There 
is something boisterously entertaining about what is going on in their 
poverty-stricken lives.

            John G. Bennett wrote of an encounter in Africa: "Following a 
lightly trodden path, I came upon a Basuto village.  All the inhabitants were 
out hoeing mealies.  Their ages must have ranged from seven to seventy, and 
they were singing and hoeing to the rhythm of their own music.  As they saw 
me they all stopped and stood straight up in surprise.  Then with one accord 
they began to laugh.  I have never heard such laughter.  It was pure joy and 
friendship, without malice and without thought.  I joined in, and we all 
laughed together for several minutes.  I waved my hand and walked on, and 
they resumed their gravity and their hoeing.

        "This was one of the unforgettable moments of my life.  A lifetime's 
experience had convinced me that happiness is greatest where material 
prosperity is least.  I had seldom seen a happy rich man, but I had seen many 
happy people among the poorest villagers of Asia Minor or Greece.  I had seen 
happiness in Omdurman, but this happiness that I saw before my eyes was 
beyond all the others.  Here was a village totally lacking even the smallest 
of the benefits of civilization.  They had not even a plough or a cart.  And 
yet they were the happiest people I had ever seen.  They were without fear 
and without pride." (2)

        The meek shall inherit the Earth, for the meek remember who they are 
and where their power comes from.  The meek overcome oppression not by 
fighting it, but by serving the Earth.

(1) John Trudell, on the occasion of a memorial service for Earth First! 
Activist Judy Bari.

(2) J G Bennett, _Witness_ Claymont Communications, 1983, pg. 229.