72 ~ God bless the neighbors, every one.
Last Monday I returned home at mid-day after a morning of writing at one of my local cafés (this time at Anita’s in Arena), and found on my front step a couple of pints of blueberries. Attached was a note from neighbors Greg & Linda, that they’d picked them at 11 am. Now that’s a nice way to return home! And just a few days earlier, by invitation I’d dived into a fantastic patch of wild blackberries at Mary & Dave’s place, reaching it by a trail through the gallery of their magnificently restored prairie. Some of both hauls of berries went into five-star smoothies courtesy of yogurt made by another neighbor (the rest went into the deep freeze for a mid-winter berry pie). And, inshallah, come early December I’ll swap maple syrup and Swiss chocolate to Greg & Linda for a chance to cut a Christmas tree from their land (a tradition of several years now).
We can say all we want about the values of rugged individualism and libertarian self-sufficiency, but it’s a simple fact that humans evolved as a cooperative, group-living species. We’re flocking birds, not golden eagles. Social cooperation is coded in our DNA, and we will inevitably feel more ease within a community and the flow of exchange that keeps communities alive, than in isolation. It’s as if we’re cells in a body, and the true living being is the community.
Consequently, I’m grateful to have some community with my neighbors along the road here. Finding community can sometimes be a challenge, particularly in these United States, where individualism is placed on such a high pedestal. It’s interesting to observe, for example, the different patterns of farm settlement between North America on one hand, and Europe and Asia. Across most of Europe and Asia, farmers live together in a village, and head out to work surrounding fields each day (or sometimes for a season; but they rarely live full-time amidst their fields). In contrast, American and Candian farmhouses are typically dotted across the landscape, isolated on each farm family’s 40, 400 or 4000. ‘Community’ is more of a concept, or intention, than a physical reality.
Perhaps, as has been noted, the rugged folks who immigrated to North America from Europe were self-selected for those who by nature didn’t quite fit in back home, and wished to get away (maybe including my own great-great grandmother, Bridget Boylan, from Cavan, Ireland). Still, our collective DNA calls humans toward community, wherever we can find it. So say ‘hi’ to your neighbors, and maybe leave something on each other’s front steps on occasion.
It continues to be very dry here amongst the gardens (none of my multiple plantings of carrots made it, for example). Still, food is starting to come in – in the last week or two, the first cherry tomatoes, zucchini, broccoli, bell peppers and wax beans. And the corn is looking good so far.
In the thin days of spring, you toss some seeds onto a blank sea of garden soil, and hope and watch. And more often than not, come August a tidal wave rolls in. Zucchini, anyone?