by CC Elder, Bellingham, Washington

Artichokes

“Okey dokey artichokey.”

That’s what my 2 and a quarter year old thinks. She says this as we’re getting in the truck to harvest some potatoes just outside of town.  Once we’re digging, I’m almost having a hard time unearthing them at the pace she is throwing them in the tulip flat.  Occasionally she stops and replants one. After digging 50 lbs of reds and yellow fingerlings, Aila has climbed in one of the tulip flats and is ready to go say hi to the llamas.

It is a challenge to fulfill my societal requirements, i.e. bills, jobs, laws, and also re-create a culture in myself and my daughter that more accurately mirrors my real human values:

• Stewardship to the land and water
• Responsibility for my family’s needs and actions

That’s the easy part.  The hard part is stopping weeding or stopping the potato harvest when my daughter is over it.  I don’t want to burn her on farming.  The long memory, the cultural history, the good cultivation of the earth, the generational deep water line, that’s where the sustainable myth lay dormant.

Also, plant some garlic and think about how many potatoes you would need to store to make it through winter.

Garlic Flower

CC Elder is a labor monkey.   “I work three jobs: a farm, a cooperative grocery store, and a restaurant.  I am food and I am hungry.  I love my daughter, my girl, and my guitar.  I am very poor, but rich beyond belief.  I’m also a strong proponent of starting a revolution in your neighborhood today.  Plant a seed, sing a song, take a nap.”