Wow, been incredibly busy here on the farm and away as well. Engaged in finishing up the last of the plant breeding for quite some time and setting all the wheels to spin for the winter 2011 season as well as the 2012 season as a whole (lots to come on this later including pictures!)along with helping to create a new farmers and artisans market in my hometown (Pekin Indiana).
Anyhow, though the Oak Park Controversy is now seemingly settled with the charges having been droped it brings to light many issues that need to be addressed, particularly issues dealing with self sufficiency, personal beauty aesthetics, and control grid society.
By now I'm sure you've heard and read all about it, but for those who haven't, apparently Oak Park resident Julie Bass was facing charges (including 93 days in jail) for simply planting a vegetable garden in her front yard.
Yeah, I know right? Fucking asinine to say the least!
First of all were dealing here with property rights, if I own it, it's mine, I'll do what I want how I want as long as it's not in violation of city laws and since the laws there only vaguely refer to "living plant material" a garden fits right in. Take it and shove it! Of course "rights" in today's world is an objective term.....
That said, let us point out all the reasons everyone should be ripping out their lawns to replace them with thriving gardens.
-The economy and the U.S. Dollar is gone. Food inflation isn't coming, it's here, and it isn't going to get any better any time soon.
-Oil production (regardless of weather your a "peak oil" believer or not) isn't going to go up or get any less expensive due to regulations and price manipulation coupled with the devaluing of the dollar, it isn't going to be long before gas powered machinery is a luxury (and that includes you too my farming friends with tractors!)
-Natural disasters; 2011 is a case in point, things politically and climatically globally are far more unstable than they have been in quite some time.
Since we know this isn't the first or the last time that someone has tried to make it illegal for the cultivator to put the earth to good use and we know there are far more ignorant town managers, mayers, and neighborhood improvement ass hats out there we can pretty much be assured this will happen again, particularly as (the wrong) people in power (and nosy neighbors with nothing to share or offer) become more agitated by the world and circumstances surrounding their pitifully empty lives. When everything they know is gone they look for a reason to act absurd, when they don't find one they make one up. So to them I offer this promise...........
Your cities and comfortable lives will fail, maybe not today, tomorrow, or next year, but the world you know has forever unalterably been set on a different and uncharted course. Everything that you know that brings you comfort through "suburban and urban normality" will soon be a long lost memory, I know that makes you feel vulnerable and lost and your pitiful mind longs for reason and understanding (or, more likely thrives on the chaos you inflict on others)but you can pretty much forego any comprehension skills you might have once had because they no longer mean shit.
When it comes right down to it were going to need all those front yard, side walk, median, abandoned house/property gardens. Were gonna need to rip the useless landscape plants out of the pretty little cul de sac your overpriced, cheaply built, no equity home sits in front of and were gonna need to replant it to things that matter. Life sustaining food and medicine, domestic animals, fungi, and so much more, and your going to have to learn to deal with it, weather you like it our not, your life may depend on it.
Until then I encourage everyone in every town, city, state, municipality, county, country, everywhere; globally to take to "green grafiti" as we have discussed here on the blog before. Start making seed balls full of life sustaining seed and pelting empty spots in landscape beds, traffic medians, empty lots, ditches, and particularly in overpriced subdivisions for the sake of long term sustainability! We can all produce far more seed than we will ever need, why not put it to good use.
Oh, and just think about the possibilities when it comes to seed of that "illegal" plant..............the most traveled seeds in the world (riding in 1 out of 3 cars) being sent flying out the window at 60 miles an hour (Fukuoka Revamped!) into ditches and public property everywhere. Police that!
2 comments:
That case was absurd. We've never quite plumbed those depths here, though I once lived in a Cornish cottage where we were theoretically banned from growing veg or hanging out washing in the front garden. No court here would have enforced it, but when the place was built (1840) it faced the local mine owner's house and he wasn't having it.
We have had cases of people being banned from keeping chickens, and we're going to need them - with cockerels - and we've only just got to the point where my bees are legal. For ten years I had them on my allotment illegally.
I love your seed bomb idea ive always wondered why huge unleased unsprayed comercial lots in my boring suburb couldnt be sprawling with feral peppers and tomatoes.
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