Underground!

 My hat for gardening says "I love dirt!" on the front, and it reflects my sentiments exactly. But of course most of us were trained from an early age to avoid getting "dirty" and to avoid being in the dirt. Somehow that word has expanded to include all sorts of unsavory things. Yet dirt is where we come from! It is essential to our lives and the lives of most everything else on our planet. Someone suggested to me the other day that I should stop using the word dirt, and start using a more socially acceptable word like soil or earth. But that made me want to use the word dirt more! For we have been conditioned to avoid contact with the land under our feet, and we need to erase that inclination from our minds. Dirt is good. It is the ground from which everything emerges on this planet. 

I remember being fascinated when in my biology class in high school more than 60 years ago, we learned that scientists were starting to talk about ecosystems. It was a new and exciting theory. All of us living beings on the planet were not just plopped down here, whatever our identity, to survive in isolation. Instead, everything was connected in one way or another. And those interactions, when left to develop by themselves, tended to form helpful relationships. We studied the role insects played in plant growth. We learned of the interrelationship between animals and the green world. We started thinking more broadly about our place in the ecosystem, and that of other living things.

However, we didn't study the enormously diverse and important ecosystem under our feet. We humans tend to live above the ground, unlike moles, chipmunks, and earthworms. The world we see with our eyes is what we perceive. And combined with the training to avoid getting dirty, the fact that we cover so much of our ground with sidewalks, roads, and buildings probably means many people don't actually see exposed ground very often. And even then, it may be piled up by a bulldozer clearing space for new ground-covering projects. 

Over the years, I've gradually formed a respect for the earth that covers our planet. It took ever so long to form from the original rock. Slowly water and other natural forces broke down that rock. And today, millions of years later, the soil on our planet is a beautiful combination of minerals, organic matter, gases, water and organisms. I love to go to the Neil Smith National Wildlife Refuge near Prairie City, Iowa, and walk down some steps into an underground passage. There you can see, through the glass wall, the underground vista of a prairie. There are small roots, long roots, tunnels of animals. And what we can't see because they are too small are the billions of tiny organisms in the soil, some not even studied by us yet. 

Over the centuries, our human tendency has been to make decisions favoring quick gain rather than look at the long-term effects of our efforts. This has not only created the current above-ground crises such as climate change and the extinction of so many species. It has also depleted much of our soil. And it is time for us to make some important changes in how we treat it. Indigenous farmers have been practicing farming techniques for centuries that improve soil composition and avoid the toxic chemicals that are part of our dominant farming culture. Lately there is a movement toward regenerative models of agriculture that are largely based on these indigenous practices, and we are beginning to see traditional farmers implementing these in their own fields. It is exciting. And if you live near Iowa City, please consider coming to our next Earthcare Working Group session here at Prairie Hill. For we are focusing on soil as well as on bringing our food world closer home. Here's the announcement and all are welcome to attend (though I know that most of you who read this are too far away).

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Announcing the upcoming Earthcare Working Group meeting

Saturday, July 5, 2:00 to 4:00 at Prairie Hill Cohousing

140 Prairie Hill Drive, Iowa City 52245

Agenda: This time we’ll continue focusing on the land we live on and farm on, the earth beneath our feet that over time has been eroded and drained of its essential nutrients, the earth that needs our care and attention if we are to find ways of continuing to survive in this world. At our last meeting, we watched the first third of the movie Common Ground, and we’ll finish watching it this time. Here’s how the producers describe it:

Common Ground is the highly anticipated sequel to the juggernaut success documentary, Kiss the Ground, which touched over 1 billion people globally and inspired the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put $20 billion toward soil health. By fusing journalistic expose’ with deeply personal stories from those on the front lines of the food movement, Common Ground unveils a dark web of money, power, and politics behind our broken food system. The film reveals how unjust practices forged our current farm system in which farmers of all colors are literally dying to feed us. The film profiles a hopeful and uplifting movement of white, black, and indigenous farmers who are using alternative “regenerative” models of agriculture that could balance the climate, save our health, and stabilize America’s economy – before it’s too late.

We’ll have plenty of time to discuss our reactions to this film as we eat snacks. Then we plan to bring this common ground subject home by discussing the whole issue of local food. How can we eat more food grown close to our homes? We’ll talk about local CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture) as well as turning our backyards into gardens. Then we’ll hear about some Prairie Hill members who have started a project that will promote sustainable living and increase community engagement by helping our neighbors grow fresh produce, right in their own yards. The first step will be to demonstrate raised-bed gardening at the next Miller Orchard Jamboree in Benton Hill Park (Sept. 20). We will meet with those interested, obtain funding to buy and install raised-beds, and assign gardening mentors to help them get started. Resources and models are Dubuques's Convivium https://www.convivium-dbq.com, and Iowa City's Backyard Abundance https://www.backyardabundance.org.