Why We're Doing A Garden Even Though It's Late In Season

New Skills & Capabilities Are Helpful In An Era Of Disruption

A well-worn shovel stuck into partially dug up earth. Image by Lukas from Pixabay.

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I already gave away the point of the post in the subtitle, “New Skills & Capabilities Are Helpful In An Era Of Disruption.” But here’s a bit more in this post. And yes! We’re planting seedling plants not plant seeds given how late in season it is.

WHY THE GARDENING HAS TAKEN SO FREAKING LONG

I’ve been working to plant a new garden with a friend, in a yard where there hasn’t been a garden in years. We haven’t gotten it finished yet because of life stuff, even though we started getting ready for it in April.

But then… life happens. I had a health issue. A family member had a medical emergency including emergency surgery. Two other family members graduated from college in two different states one day apart. There have been hospital visits, family movie nights, time with friends, two family birthdays, and a neat birthday party for a one-year-old in a park for an afternoon.

And the yard we’re gardening in…

Well, the yard was a bit of a jungle; mid-western style. It was heavily filled with very large Virginia Creeper vines all over the place, still has Creeping Charlie everywhere where it hasn’t been cleared for the garden, and had a number of bushes in the area we intended to garden in. I’m really understating it but it’s been an adventure just getting space cleared. And we haven’t even tilled it yet. Although we did call for locates for any underground pipes and wires, because of course we’ll also need some kind of fence to keep out the teeming area rabbit population. Which — then we also needed to figure out what to do for a fence, which also still isn’t ready but we do have the pieces and parts.

In positive news, we did get a super neat huge mattock that’s the size of a Super Pulaski you’d use in wildland fire, which I’m excited to use for hacking up roots as we break up the ground (till) to get ready to plant. Like today and tomorrow. I say I'm excited… but ask me after I’ve hefted that thing around with an upper body that hasn’t used a hand tool like that in earnest since the 1990s. Ha! It wasn’t even this century! We also have shovels, a pitchfork, and an array of tilling tools. So we’ll see how that goes.

THE POINT

Since it’s already early June and we don’t have a garden planted yet, we took a minute this week to make sure we still want to do it.

Here’s why I think it’s important.

We’re in this time of disruption, and I think it’s going to be important to know how to grow stuff in the places where we live.

I’m under no delusions that any single family or person’s garden can feed that person or family. Humans need a lot of food.

But if we experience major supply chain or agricultural disruptions this year or in the coming years, we’ll have a better chance to navigate it successfully if we have a garden, gardening skills, and actual gardening produce — for whatever we end up using it for.

Our plan this year isn’t to become gardening experts. It’s not a plan to become preppers. It’s not a plan to become experts at canning or food preservation, either.

Our plan is to learn to garden, to see what works in the space and the light, to see what challenges we have, to find out what foods we like to grow, to find out what our neighbors might like, to find out what we’re good at growing, to find out if we need different approaches or fertilizers or chemicals, to see if our fence approach works, and so on.

We’re in an increasingly unstable era. What came before we can’t go back to. We have a Republican administration and Congress either actively dismantling and deleting government, or willingly looking the other way, or unfunding and unstaffing it as they can.

All of those actions will lead to disruptions in our society.

But we’ll get disruption from other sources, too — and the odds of all that increase by the day.

The world order is changing fast. Tariffs are changing fast, or not (as it were). Other countries are seizing power where the US has pulled back or shown weakness. Since January, the US is more vulnerable in many ways. For example, the US has pulled back on activities like active countermeasures against certain cyberattacks. The US likely has more guns per capita than any other country in the world. We have ramped up and amped up hate and fear and anger. We have climate change changing fast. We have more intense and more frequent disasters even as key response mechanisms and capabilities are dismantled and disempowered. We could have a bird flu pandemic any minute.

And so on.

So. My friend and I are gardening.

Humans survive up on this planet. Those who survive through the toughest times work together… and they also get agile, flexible, and creative. They adapt and evolve. They learn new skills.

Whatever you can do where you are — you can do this stuff too. It doesn’t have to be gardening. Maybe it’s connecting with people. Maybe it’s building community. Maybe it’s reaching out to people who need it. Maybe it’s skill-sharing. Maybe it’s a weekly coffee just to process and compare notes and be supportive.

Whatever it is — it’s time to learn and grow and evolve.

We can find ways through. Good luck to you and yours as you go.

More to come.

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Vanessa Burnett is the director at Fierce Community. This nonprofit work promotes connection, community, coordination, creativity, engagement, empowerment, leadership, and resilience in an era of rising instability and societal disruption.

Vanessa is a social entrepreneur, advisor, and empower-er for doing fierce community in a time of disruption and disaster. Ms. Burnett has a rare systems-level understanding of the pieces and parts that modern society needs in order to survive that can help people and groups navigate this era of fast change and unprecedented challenges. She has over 25 years experience in resilience-building, civic engagement, coalition-building, critical infrastructure, systems thinking, big disasters, catastrophes, wildland fire, emergency management, incident management, land management, park rangering, homeland security, continuity of operations (COOP), continuity of government (COG), technology innovation, public communication, and disaster information sharing. Email fiercecommunityteam@gmail.com to set up a conversation.