Planting Seeds

written by

Melissa Barth

posted on

March 14, 2024

Here in the Valley, spring is definitely getting underway. With temperatures in the 50's, partly sunny skies, and an occasional warm breeze, the promise of summer does not seem far away. But just a few short weeks ago, things were not so cheery as I began my first round of indoor seedlings. 

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If I am being honest, I didn't know how I felt about this venture. Growing up, I did our family garden for several years. But due to depleted soil and lack of sunshine, my efforts were largely unsatisfactory. The thought of starting seeds felt a little like offering to hold a baby when (it seems) every baby you have ever held was overcome with a feeling of intense sadness the moment they were placed in your arms (cue crying baby). 

Yet as I dampened the soil and began filling the little planter cells, a feeling of calmness came over me. The next 90 minutes passed peacefully and most enjoyably as I reconnected with a simpler form of work. 

I am not what I would consider a gardener, and gardening is not even my main role here at Polyface, but in that moment it was all that mattered....and it was life-giving. 

Fast forward a few weeks and I am sitting on my front porch putting in the third installation of seeds. 

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As I reflect on the task at hand and how my previous seedlings are doing, I can't help but think of the parallels between starting seeds and living life. 

First, there is the uncertainty. Will the seeds emerge? Are they too warm or too cold to germinate? Did I give them enough water or too much? Life is uncertain. Yet we can choose to take risks and dream big anyway. 

Then there is intentionality. The timing of starting seeds is critical. In my case specifically, I want them to be mature enough to be planted in the hoop house once the chickens leave but not so mature that they are root-bound. There is also their daily care to consider. Lettuce flats that once needed to be moved out of the solarium to a warmer area at night are now getting too warm during the day. And so it is with life. Planting and watering seeds of kindness takes intentionality and perseverance. Just like it isn't convenient to take seeds in and out of a solarium, so it isn't convenient to write a letter, make a meal, or give away any form of your time or resources.  

Lastly, planting seeds reminds me of life because there is a reward, whether good or bad, for the things we sow.....but it takes time. In my case, I began to worry that my seeds were not going to germinate after a considerable amount of time had passed with no visible signs of change. Yet one of my coworkers reassured me that just like in nature, when the time and conditions were right, they would germinate. It is hard to wait for a return on the things we sow in life. Whether you are investing energy into your relationships, finances, job, or health, growth does not happen overnight. But at the proper time, you will see the good result of your efforts. 

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So what are you sowing? Are you investing time and energy into the things that really matter? Are you encouraging those around you through your words and actions? 

I hope that the next time you see a seed or a little sprout it will cause you to pause and reflect on these three life principles  - uncertainty, intentionality, and reward. 

Furthermore, I hope you are encouraged to plant and cultivate the habits, attitudes, and devotions that will bring forth good fruit, not only in your own life but in the lives of others.    

More from the blog

Food Shortages

I'm in Oregon today speaking at the Azure Harvest Festival and a question from the audience during a Q&A stimulated a lot of discussion:  "What do you think about the possibility and preparation surrounding food shortages?" David Stelzer, founder of Azure Standard, answered that the issue is not food volume, it's food nutrition.   That was an interesting answer that has a lot of merit.  As a nation, we are overfed and undernourished.  This is the crux of the MAHA movement and the epidemic diseases we see in our country. At Polyface, we know the pastured meat and poultry we produce is far superior in essential phytochemicals and other nutrients due to the carotenes, exercise, and stress-free habitat we offer.  You can taste the difference, feel the difference in texture, and measure it empirically. Perhaps my most poignant affirmation was our cat test.   We purchased meat from the supermarket and offered our own for the four cats.  They wouldn't touch the conventional meat (ground beef). Even though two plates and four cats would be much easier to accommodate if they spread out, all four crowded around the plate with our meat, eating it all and licking it up, before later sniffing and gingerly eating the supermarket counterpart. Since cats don't understand TV ads or USDA propaganda, they know what's good and what's not.   We encourage anyone dismissive of food differences to ask their pets:  you can trust them far more than doctors and experts. Yes, I get the nutrient deficiency angle on the shortage question.  But I'd like to explore it a bit further.   Right now, the world throws away more human-edible food, as a percentage of production, than at any time in human history.  The planet is awash in food.   Some 40 percent gets thrown away because it has a slight blemish, exceeds the sell-by date, or is tainted in some way.  We have a fundamentally segregated food supply rather than an integrated one, and that creates a lot of unusable waste. The vulnerabilities of our food system, I think, are much more subtle.  When I was in Uruguay two years ago, speaking at a conference, one of the other presenters was from Germany and showed a soil map of the globe.  Not a single commercial agricultural region had a stable or positive soil trajectory.  Every single area on the planet is losing soil; some faster than others, but globally our soil depletion continues without any sign of abatement. This is not a good trajectory.   As much as the technocrats promise food without soil, that's not the way to bet.  Soil is the skin of the earth.  When it goes, famine results.   The main difference now compared to centuries ago is that we have the capacity to move food around.   Nobody starves due to a lack of food on the planet; they starve due to socio-political unrest and dysfunction. But what happens when massive areas can't grow anything anymore?  Even being able to move food around doesn't help when there isn't enough.   The soil trajectory does not look good.  But at Polyface, we're building soil.  Areas covered with shale (layered rocks) half a century ago now have a foot of soil on them.  That's not the 3-5 feet that 150 years of inappropriate tillage eroded, but it's a build-back start. In addition to soil loss, as a planet we're seeing hydrologic decreases.   The Oglala aquifer, which undergirds the irrigated agriculture in five states, has dropped more than 100 feet in the last half-century.  At its current rate, it will be unpumpable in about 50 more years.  Imagine if all those circular irrigation pivots in Nebraska and Kansas shut down.  What then? At Polyface, we keep building ponds to inventory surface runoff.  By definition, surface runoff occurs when rains come too fast at once or too much at one time for the soil to absorb it.  Holding that and using it strategically in a drought is a way to reduce flooding during rain events and grow grass when it gets dry.  This is one of the most landscape resilient techniques we can implement. Finally, major animal and plant diseases threaten the world's food systems like never before.   African swine fever, hoof and mouth disease in cattle, and bird flu in poultry appear to be getting worse and covering larger areas.  Why?  We believe it's because chemicals and factory farming compromise the immunological systems in both plants and animals.  Monocrops and chemical fertilizers wreak havoc on immune systems, opening the planet's food systems to new levels of fragility. In contrast, at Polyface, we believe happy animals and biodiversity offer the best antidote to immunological deficiency.  Stress from unsanitary conditions, mono-species density, or dietary deficiency (rations or fertilizer) invites disease.  Nature uses disease to cull the weak.  Predators pick off the stragglers.  This is the way biology works. But at Polyface, we keep these vulnerabilities at bay with compost fertilization, pasture rotations, and lots of species diversity, including pollinators and wildlife. Here's the point:  the basic long-term vulnerabilities in the planet's food systems could all be reversed with practices Polyface uses every day.  Looked at another way, the entire food shortage question could be answered if eaters and farmers implemented these ecological and immunological protocols, working together to rather than completely separated.  We don't need to fall into an abyss of starvation. If we all simply began eating food from farms that build soil, increase water, and stimulate immunity, we could deliver a hospitable, abundant planet to our children.   Reversing these trajectories wouldn't take much time or money.  It takes intentionally-minded folks who connect the chain of sustenance from their plate to the planet. Polyface patrons do that.  Thank you.  Let's heal the land together. Joel