A Conference on Growing

Many of my peers presently seem to be twitter-pated over crocheted footies and anything that needs a nipple.  I can’t say that I resonate with the baby-craze phase, and don’t foresee that yearning slamming into my consciousness any time in the near future. My urges to braid hair and care for small things manifest in plucking little suckers off of the splits of a tomato plant, and tucking mustard seeds into the protective womb of rich compost. But maybe I’ve been especially sympathetic with my maternally-inclined friends of late because I haven’t had the opportunity to garden.  It’s an unfulfilled instinct itching at the inner-lining of my being. And there’s nothing worse for a community than a feisty gardener wandering the streets with no place to hoe.

So you can imagine my elation (or maybe if you have never had a doll, or a spade, you cannot imagine my elation, but you can pretend to sympathize for the sake of this post) when I heard about the annual OrganicGrowers School conference at UNC-Asheville on March 3 & 4. I felt like a total has-been, an absolute poser with clean fingernails and callused hands that have been smoothed over by the dainty repetition of typing. But these growers are the businesses that I aim to support through WinnersWords, so I figured beyond the personal growth opportunities, the weekend would also be great for networking and my first chance to say super pedantically “Why, yes, this is a business expense.”

The bagillion different tracks to choose from appealed to a vast array of individuals who weren’t just attending to become better farmers. There were classes on basket weaving with kudzu, poultry basics, soil sciences, 10 things to do with a deer leg bone, edible landscapes, vegetable gardening 101, human waste compost (Yes that’s real. Yes it’s sanitary. Yes it’s awesome.), for-profit management of large-scale farms, and the list goes on and on. It was a weekend full of knowledge spent with very enriching company. The teachers were spectacular, and  I got to visit with old friends from karate and Knoxville, and newer friends that constantly invigorate me with their drive for sustainable progress and vivacious demeanors.

We could bounce among the various tracks, but I consistently found myself in classes pertaining to wild herbal medicines and medicinal foods. I took courses on how to identify them (although I might want another 3 of these so I don’t wind up poisoning myself), how to harvest them sustainably, and how to prepare them. I participated in a half-day workshop on medicinal foods in which we infused herbs into chocolate, learned about broths and experimented with different honeys (honey is a corrigent – it helps carry other medicinal herbs or foods through the digestive tract, so we learned how to incorporate healing agents like turmeric and rose petals into it).  Super delicious and fascinating. Another class went through fifty different foods off of which one can survive in the wild, ranging from greens and nuts to animals. I don’t intend to go out and can skunk any time soon, but the idea that I can make a salad from a walk in the woods, that the world can be my grocery store and a flower bed my medicine cabinet has been something I’ve attested to for quite some time without the education to back it. The world provides us everything we need – vitamins, anti-inflammatories, grief remedies, aphrodisiacs, cartilage rebuilders.

It speaks to us, too. It is intending to educate us and we are so busy making fun of the “mother earth hippies” and mowing it over for profit that we can’t hear its lessons. Every time I walk out into the woods, I feel like I’m on the verge of discovery, but I can’t figure out if that’s discovery of self, of some “beyond” or simply a re-centering that balances the two. These classes spoke to the mindfulness that I have been seeking in all aspects of my life. And it’s almost like role-reversal. In the garden, I am the steward. And in the woods, I am the child waiting for the lesson to be whispered to me.