Growing With Integrity and Love: Service

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Letter to the Kale

This week we have fingerling potatoes (3 varieties), savoy cabbage, trio beans, rainbow chard deluxe, zucchini, broccoli, winter squash and kale, of course.

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Letter to the Kale in the Garden.

Kale,

Two crates stand empty beside your rows. You are verdant and dew draped. So beautiful. These are the last moments for your leaves to sing in sun and sprinkler.

Little bed of wonder, you have given and given. Now you will feed a hundred people. And when you grow back you will feed a hundred more. And more again.

I see you and your offering. How patient and willing you are for my hungry knife.
Thank you for your service and your light.
Thank you for singing praises of the earth.
Thank you for dancing when the soft summer wind moves like a lover through your supple bodies.
Thank you for providing us the essence of sun and storm.

Do you hear the poems of the knife blade whispering? Do you hear the happy people who will meet you today and take you home into their homes and into their bodies?

Rick

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Questions, Mantras and Prayers

Today: Our first Farmer's Market of the Season

At Legacy Hospital, 2211 NE 39th St., Vancouver from 3PM till 7 PM

Please Come by. We'll be here every Tuesday until the leaves fall.

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The garden inventory is high and growing. Today, the first wave of twenty four will sweep through the garden in a harvest for the people. I ask myself these questions:

Have I planted enough?

Have I planned well?

What beds to reseed?

What beds to retire?

These are the questions of life.

I will just do what I can do, the best I know how. The only path now is between the rows of abundance, pulling what I need for my little acts of service and gratitude.

Instead of listening to the mantra of "It's not enough", I remind myself:

It's up to the plants now.

It's up to the Earth.

My efforts are all growing verdant in the field.

These are the mantras of any working person.

Today is our first market as Moon Bear.

It's a good day to wield the knife in the tangle of stems.

It's a good day to harvest the bounty.

It's a good day to gently wash the dirt off the roots.

It's a good day to offer what only passed through my hands for a moment in time and space.

These are the prayers of anyone who wants to free.

~~~

To the Moon Bear CSA: We will have your cooler and boxes ready here at the Art Farm, as usual, on Thursday from 2 PM till Friday at noon. If you want to start picking up boxes at the Legacy Market on Tuesdays, let me know.