Monday, March 3, 2014

Stewardship, When the World's Gone Mad


I respect the man. He knows, excruciatingly, that GMO-mayhem careens through the world unchecked, a Biotech plague of locusts. Nonetheless, he makes his stand for sanity and a viable future.

He is an organic farmer.

Despite metastasizing insanity of patent-profit GMO's which imperil public health and contaminate sustainable agriculture, does he--oh well--go belly-up?

Not hardly. Dogged labor has created a working CSA. (Community Supported Agriculture, where customers pay up front for weekly bounty, thus facilitating seed and soil amendment investment at spring planting time.)

He's built cabins for his bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young apprentices; dedicated himself to preserving and propagating land race corn--seed saved, from before the infestation of carcinogenic GMO maize.

Monsanto, monstro, eat your heart out.

Mind you, this is not Iowa, not the corn belt and former bread basket of the world, its gazillion acres mined and poisoned by the Biotech juggernaut.

It's the outback here, high desert, his farm snugged up against the Rockies and irrigated with acequia water from the mountain springs.

There's hope in isolation and quiet dedication.

Also in joy-filled choices: a flavorful tomato grown in a pot on apartment balcony; the carnival abundance of a farmers market, amongst land stewards, herbalists and independent thinkers.
Once I was traveling by train through northern Europe. Not all the rubble had been cleared away from scorched earth WWII bombings.

Horrid cement-gray apartments had gone up, oppressively dismal in the midst of urgent rebuilding of industry. I felt ill transiting such bleak habitat.

And then, sat upright; my heart went woof!

One of the smokestack-grunge apartments, high above wasteland, had window boxes all across--full of bright red geraniums!

...Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
...Do not go gentle into that good night...

~Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet, Scorpio

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