Is there a connection between bandit leeks and world peace?

When asked what I want for my birthday, I usually respond, “World peace.” This answer often elicits a groan.

But it’s true – I’m not into celebrating my birthday, I don’t want anymore stuff, and if you want to give me something that I’ll truly appreciate then bring world peace, or at least contribute something towards achieving it.

In the meantime, we can all go about our regularly scheduled lives: worrying about how we’re going to pay the bills, wondering about the next time we’ll get laid, day dream about: getting a better job, owning a newer car, going on a nicer vacation, etc etc.

Today was another one of those in-between days at Anahata. It’s been raining (a good thing) but as we’re in the process of working the soil and building beds, a lot of rain hampers our abilities to do this. It’s not good to apply lime to wet soil and it’s a heck of a lot harder to move wet soil (much harder in fact) than it is to hoe and rake dry soil.

This means that today:
1. I went for a walk and took note of the trees the forester has marked for cutting.
2. Ben and I cut row cover to fit our beds
3. I attempted to mow the lawn only to find that the lawn mower needs to be charged before I can start it. (It’s being charged as I write this.)
4. A small discussion about which crops to plant over the next couple of days took place. The outcome – onions and potatoes are ready to go. Tonight we’ll cut up the potatoes, let ‘em dry, and then Saturday they’ll go into the ground. Yukon Gold, Norland Red, All Blue
5. I re-organized a portion the workspace in the basement

There aren’t anymore seeds to germinate, all the varieties for transplanting (TP) have been germinated and are either in the green house awaiting transplanting or for the lucky ones such as Bilko, Ripbor, White Russian, and Rouge D’Hiver (to name only a few) they’ve been transplanted. From here on out it’s direct seeding (DS). There was one tray of leeks in the green house that required attention -- trimming of the tips – to prevent the seedlings from desiccating after they’ve been transplanted.

I volunteered to trim the leeks and while I was engaged in this rather tedious task, I entered “the zone.” The zone is that yummy meditative state where goodness reigns.
As I sat on the floor of the greenhouse I noticed that I’m not as high strung as I used to be. Today I would have preferred to have been in the fields making beds and that means that I was craving activity.

On a side note -- if you had any idea what building raised beds entails you’d think, “She prefers that?”

Ben and I are running a human-powered market garden – on occasion we use a chain saw or a roto tiller, otherwise everything has been done by hand. This means that we amend fields using shovels and a cart to spread manure, when we build beds we use rakes and hoes. Lately it takes Ben and me about two and a half hours to build one bed that’s 50 feet by 5 feet. Yesterday while we were shaping a bed with rakes I started laughing. Ben asked, “What?” I said, “Dude, we spend all day outdoors moving tons of dirt with rakes.” He smiled and shouted, “Living the dream!”

Are you wondering if my back is broken or whether I’m in the best physical shape I’ve ever been in?” The answer -- “My back is nowhere near broken and my body is fit – fit in that lean, farmer kind of way.” Ben and I take a few breaks here and there but mainly we’re outdoors working the land for 12 hours per day.

-- A word to the wise: anyone out there who’s contemplating running an organic vegetable garden around 1 acre in size and doesn’t plan to use a tractor: give this a proposition a considerable amount of thought. The work is rewarding and interesting and you’ll be jacked into a Life of Ag but it requires a tremendous amount of physical labor. The physical labor can be almost mind-numbing. Of course when you look back at your beds and see them bursting with kale and lettuce and broccoli and cauliflower you’ll feel connected to the earth in way that’s would be impossible to imagine. (My vegetables will be damn good eats and there’ll be a hint of blood, sweat, and tears in each and every bite of them. Perhaps that’s the difference in taste between conventional produce and organic produce.)

I moved out of the city to strengthen my connection to the land and the food system, and I hoped to earn a living as an organic farmer. The “earning a living” bit has yet to emerge but I think it’s on its way.

…Now I find that I’ve digressed, where was I? …oh right, in the greenhouse trimming leeks.

I was seated in the greenhouse and I started to think about world peace. “Can it be achieved?” “What needs to happen to achieve it?” The first-grader in me said, “Stop dropping bombs.” But we all know how unrealistic and simple-minded that is. (Aren’t there entire departments in universities devoted to political science? I wonder what Christopher Hitchens would do in a world where there was peace, everywhere. Sadly war isn’t going away anytime soon.) Then when I leapt a few decades ahead in my consciousness and wondered if by sitting in a greenhouse, in the country, and being kind to myself was in fact a valid contribution towards attaining world peace. My new life style might not be a tax deductible contribution but it seems to count towards something. During the workweek I rode the C train in the mornings to give myself a few extra minutes to meditate before I entered the workplace where I was sure to be immersed in light pollution, noise pollution, poor indoor air quality, a lot of nasty office politics, and surrounded by several extremely toxic people.

Six years ago I started to have debilitating panic attacks at work. I told my GP that I wasn’t interested in taking a pill and asked him if I could try biofeedback. He said sure and referred me to a woman who offered biofeedback training. In many ways I think that those biofeedback sessions contributed to my being able to sit in the greenhouse and trim leeks and be at peace.

The biofeedback sessions comprised of me sitting in a comfy chair, in a dimly lit room, with a woman who would talk to me about “fight or flight” and then hook me up to a monitor and have me do breathing exercises. This woman also told me the lovely tale of my panic attack, it’s all about “fight or flight.” Something triggered the attack and then my brain would take over and send my body into flight mode. This meant that I was blowing off a lot of carbon dioxide and my boy was getting ready to fight to save its life. The standard line is that back in the day you’d see a lion and want to run for your life, blah blah blah.

Of course I hadn’t seen a lion, I’d been in New York City, on the 15th floor, seated at my desk. (The nearest lion possibly in an enclosure at the Bronx Zoo?)

This meant that something in the office was the equivalent of seeing a lion.

But the key to unraveling my panic attacks didn’t have anything to do with changing personnel it was a phrase the practitioner used, “You have to reset your baseline.” And when she put it like that I thought, “This I can do.”

In the years since the biofeedback I’ve deepened my meditation practice which means that I’ve turned to my breath as a way to re-set my baseline.

While I trimmed leeks I watched my breath and swatted away black flies and handled the plants and thought, “Inner peace is connected to world peace and we should promote peace on the level of the individual.”

As I sit here in the seedling pod, outside a strong wind has gathered force as a weather system moves in. Looking to the South I see large gray clouds heading my way.

Today Ben and I are awaiting several deliveries: “Cheep Cheep” (organic fertilizer), and row cover and hoops. I don’t hold out much hope that the deliveries are going to be made this afternoon. This means that tomorrow might be another day of not being able to build beds -- thanks to more rain and no fertilizer. Getting through yet another in-between day at this stage of the game will probably require yet another level of Zen because 2 consecutive days of not being able to build beds is almost maddening and I trimmed that one little tray of leeks.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll clean the entire house? Peacefully.