Question asked in a post by Permaculture/bioregionalist friend & colleague Molly.
My comments in response:
Because I’m not good at growing annual vegetables. Never have been.
I’m good at foraging. And I grow some fruit trees and a lot of native plants.
Other than that I prefer to concentrate on the things I am good at, that I can contribute to my community & the world.
And I would rather pay local farmers and other local people for the food they love to grow, are good at growing, and are happy to sell/barter.
Same answer goes for my whole household, as for me as an individual.
And: I actually think the real answer to this question for me – and maybe for other people – is that it’s lonely drudge work and not a good use of energy, unless it is done in community.
Otherwise everything is too much work. The seeding, harvesting etc — It’s not meant to be an individual endeavor. It scales up a lot better than it works at an individual or small household scale.
Even a block scale or neighborhood scale would make it more appealing and fun and therefore more people would want to keep trying and working together.
Also different people will always be better with different aspects of the task, and different areas of the neighborhood will always be better suited to growing different vegetables and fruits. Even two lots next-door to each other can differ quite greatly.
On a related note that I don’t hear talked about, I think there’s a massive cognitive drain in permie + related circles, from too many people who are not meant to be farming moving out to the country on acreage because they feel like they’re “supposed to.”
Somehow the Permaculture Design concept “Grow food where the people are” (including in cities, suburbs, etc.) got warped into “move out onto a big piece of land and enact a modern-day version of that ‘American Gothic’ painting, get completely tied up in trying to grow all of your own food.”
BTW “grow food where the people are” is only one of the Permaculture design concepts. Permaculture design is about energy cycling, water stewardship, stewardship of human energy, and so much more. It’s really natural engineering that we all can have the opportunity to do, by ourselves and together.
And to expand on my thought about cognitive drain … What seems apparent, at least with a lot of people, is that when they say they don’t have time to garden or grow vegetables, they mean that their “job” takes up all/most of their time / energy. Typically the “job” is something that is done at a company, and is done mainly or only for money rather than also being something that the person loves and is a fit for their deepest skills and heart’s calling.
Furthermore, the person’s heart’s calling is likely unrelated to gardening as well as to their job. Each of us has something or some things that we feel like we were born to do, born to share — but unfortunately the mainstream economy does not value or compensate those things enough.
So here’s a person already burnt out from their company job, beating themself up because they’re not gardening as in growing rows and rows of vegetables.
And then on top of that, if they’re trying to work their job and also grow vegetables, they have less than zero time for the thing or things they are really gifted at & called to do. Things that their community and the world needs quite desperately despite the fact that the mainstream economy does not adequately value or compensate.
In this environment, the only way to carve out self-determinism is to ruthlessly cut down on the squandering of our own human energy. To be absolute fierce bulldogs in guarding our own time, energy, and creativity. Any sacrifice becomes worth it to cut the bills if we’re doing it so that we can have creative and occupational self determination.
One of my dreams is for everybody to be able to do their heart’s calling, such that all of our work will make music together like a cosmic symphony.
And yes, that will include growing vegetables.
It will also of course include all the quotidian basics basics like doing laundry, but laundry won’t be a drudge because we will be doing it together in an ecologically harmonious way, with lots of elders and kids splashing in and around a natural body of water as the work gets done. Or rain tubs or what have you. In society 2.0, it won’t just be a certain age women who are burdened with the domestic tasks. Actually I’m not sure it’s ever been that way. I think children have always helped. It’s just in recent industrial capitalist society that children get sidelined and not involved in the household economy.