Our World of Agribusiness...

This abandoned farmhouse house on the High Texas Plains touches a sad cord and I share this memento from my trip through the area this spring. I want to paint Andrew Wyeth's yearning girl in the foreground to give it deeper meaning, an idea that speaks of what we face, what we've done with our present, what hopes we have for our future. There is more here than just emptiness and neglect. It represents our monoculture, our separation from land and connectedness.  Every bit of land is plowed for... corn? Probably.  Now I've posted below my surreal parody of Wyeth's Christina's World.  I'll call it Christina's (PostModern) World.  There.  I feel better already. Not. 

What was once there, really?  A circle of intertwined life in co-existence.  Not now.

We've lost our total connection to the land and in doing so, we're losing our knowledge of life, growth and sustenance and in the process, we're losing ourselves and our future.

Now living in McMansions with ugly pastic playtoys in empty fertilized yards with high fences, eating corn-fed feedlot beef with tomatoes grown in Brazil, strawberries in winter, sipping Chilean wine, dining on Asian rice, spending 10 calories of fossil fuel for every calorie we consume,  and bemoaning food price increases with farmers paid not to raise crops, we wonder how we got here and how to change it. 

Perhaps we need to think about planting our own gardens, growing some of our own food and making our gardening a sustaining venture.  Food shipped around the world has extremely environmental costs, the subject of a NYTimes article. Michael Pollan's books sit next to my bed, both half read.  His recent article in the NYTimes, Why Bother, suggests we act in hopes our actions become viral.  Victory gardens once supplied 40% of the food in WWII.  Since then, we've lost our hold on our own dirt and its potential in our cycle of life.

Comments

[Friend in East Texas]

Your post today again touch a chord. Since moving to East Texas, the slower lifestyle, small town charm, I reconnected with gardening and canning.
Here, still the growing of fresh vegetables, canning anything that can be grown and sharing with a neighbor is routine. I will never forget going to get a lease the first month in Nacogdoches. I left with a sack full of canned okra, jellies and jams, and fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. This, given to me by a couple I had just met hours before.....,
Will I experience any of this in Oklahoma (when I move back)?" I think not, but my plan is to have a garden and 'plant the seeds for change'......, even though I will have a very small place, I will have a small garden. I will can, and stock in my pantry those homemade treats for just the right person to pass on a forgotten 'gift of the land"!

[Janie]

I agree. I MISS farming. The smell of rich soil.

Yeah. I miss it.

[Janet]

Barbara Kingsolver wrote a book about trying to live on what they grew - they moved back to Kentucky from Arizona because they couldn't make it work. I wish I could remember the title. We don't have enough sun to grow anything much. We have basil in pots and a couple of tomato plants on the deck.