Green

The theme this week is Green.  I know, first glance, even I have stretched the concept too far.  But I’ve had a piece, an article, an opinion, to unload for nearly a week now.  The topic has welled up anger, resentment, sadness, grief, depression and on back around to anger.  I knew I had to finally write up what was swimming around furiously in my grey matter and it is most certainly connected to Green.  The Green that is a supposed life-style, a political position, a cultural fashion statement, and a whole lot less an actual colour.

I’ve taken lots of pictures of green yesterday and this morning when I went for a brisk walk, all would have worked fine.  I came up to my crow’s nest to finish writing up what most likely will be an introductory post, because I have a lot to say and a lot of opinion to explain and still I have a ton of work around the farm to accomplish.  I know Dear Reader, me, of all folks should not say, I tell you more later, because it seems as if that later never arises.  But there you have it, I’m starting right off with a potentially empty promise.

Anyway, like I said, I had plenty of very green pictures, trust me this isn’t Arizona, I’m not runnin’ short of green shots. And any one of them could have fit the opinion and the Header Theme (by the way, go see what the others have today for Dave’s pick of Green, everybody is on my sideboard even if I don’t keep it current with what the theme is and who the winners are).

So back to my choice of pictures…  Any of my shots that I was about to send to Photoshop for cropping to header size and clearing up fuzz could have sufficed.  But then unknowingly (human consciously speaking) my dear daughter brought me early tea and she brought it on a green plate. 

Quite frankly my decision had just shrunk.  The only decision was how much of the green plate did you need to see. 

That done, now for my opinion, and don’t worry I ain’t feeling humble about it, alone maybe, but not humble and careful.  I’m crabby, depressed and crabby.  Please don’t pat my head and tell me it will all be okay.  Please don’t give me airy sympathy.  All I ask is that you contemplate, you don’t even have to contemplate in my direction, you can, you are free to have, and free to express the opposite opinion, strongly even. 

Green?  We as a community, culture, people, won’t get the remotest gist of green, being green, until we respect, understand and appreciate the folks who’s job it is to deliver the products of the land to our doors, our cupboards and plates.  The products of which without, life would not be.

I know that this seems to be a bit of tooting our own horn for our benefit, but we’re not a very big cog in the wheel and haven’t even been that much for a while.  We intend that soon our farm will provide table product for what would essentially be ten other families, in the past we’ve only provided barely that in just lamb and egg product.  So if we were taken off the map, land and produce included, the impact would be minute at it’s largest.  It comes from a heart that has long witnessed an ill.  An ill that pervades the whole of the country. An insidious, invasive ill.

The problem is in the accumulative.  Others like us, others a bit bigger than us, others a lot bigger than us, add ’em all up and you get a big dent, a whopper, even if you speak of local farms, even in my county where farming has just about become extinct in the grand scheme of things, take what is left, rub it out, and yes, you would have a big dent.

We, as a culture, a supposed reformed culture, run around hugging trees, decry chemical use and worry that the meat in the store might have missed out on a blissful life. We suck down old and new literature the likes of “Diet for a Small Planet” and “Since Silent Spring”  and “Living Green”.  But miss such a huge piece it isn’t funny.

This week in the news:

The goal is to divert the record high waters of the Mississippi away from Baton Rouge and New Orleans, choosing to risk smaller communities in an attempt to avert disaster in the most populous cities.

Sorry, but I’m cranky today, have been for a while, cranky and depressed, even though the sun is finally shining here.  On the home front the sun is shining but because of three inches of rain delivered on already fully saturated ground from very late in the evening on Saturday to Sunday evening, our Market Garden and front pasture is back under standing water and the transcontinental ditch is flowing like it did back at the beginning of April. And that makes me crazy. 

But I only have the sky to blame and work to do to minimize the effect.  Well that and when I openly complain about the water and its effects I work hard at not welling with anger at the person who proceeds to tell me that all the rain is beautiful and lovely and the mold on my strawberries isn’t as big a deal as the pretty sound the rushing water on the streets make, or some such crap.

These folks not only are about to see all their work and all their possible future work get wiped away, they have to deal with the gross attitude that right now has my panties in a wad. 

Farmers don’t matter.  By all means farmers and their land and what they do is expendable.  Cities are not. 

Really!  You must be joking!  Okay I get that there has to be decision made and sometimes in the end it very well may come out that the least damaging thing is to wipe our current crops and future cropping ability.  But the apparent disregard for what is going on? It is just unbelievable to me.  Unbelievable.  But not surprising.

No matter what we do, every single one of us, day in day out, at least three times a day, the provider of the bottom line, the folks at the very beginning, entry level wellness gets nothing but disregard.  After all, it’s just dirt farmers.

Uneducated.  Unimaginative.  Unmotivated. Farmers and their land.  Land that there is plenty of.  Land that can just be replanted when the water goes away.

Even when the greenie tree huggers, the compassionate few who stand up for Bossy the milk cow, get in on the conversation, it is always in defense of the consumer, the product, and the land, but never the folks who make sure that the truck driver has something to go in his truck, the market manager something to put on his shelves and the hungry something to put in their gullet.

Most often the provider gets bashed and derided for not doing the job that the greener thinks he ought.  Hang out in Super Supplements or Starbucks and get and earful about the evil greedy dumb farmer.  Unless of course they farm in Burkenstocks or in a third world nation with a bunch of college kids on mission trips.

More later, I need to go pull weeds and plant seeds.