"Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating. The food he grows will be fresher, more nutritious, less contaminated by poisons and preservatives and dyes that what he can buy in a store. He is reducing the trash problem; a garden is not a disposable container, and it will digest and reuse its own wastes. If he enjoys working in his garden, then he is less dependent on an automobile or merchant for his pleasure. He is involving himself directly in the work of feeding people.
A person who undertakes to grow a
garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit
the economy of the soil, has set his mind decisively against what is wrong with
us. He is helping himself in a way that dignifies him and that is rich in
meaning and pleasure. But he is doing something else that is more
important: he is making vital contact with the soil and the weather on which his
life depends. He will no longer look upon rain as a traffic impediment, or
upon the sun as a holiday decoration. And his sense of humanity's
dependence on the world will have grown precise enough, one would hope, to be
politically clarifying and useful."
- Wendell Berry, "The World-Ending Fire", p. 55
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