seed saving

3rd year. cups, caves, ash and making space.

Yesterday was the third anniversary of Carl’s passing. I’m afraid that if I start writing that I might not be able to stop. I don’t know where to begin. There are too many things in these past many months that have been left unsaid. Life here in Uganda is always happening. It’s often messy and includes a complex weaving of stories that are not always mine to tell, at least not publically. Writing takes time. Untangling my thoughts from the complex intertwining of miracles and disappointments often takes more than I have to give. Which is unfortunate. Because God has been woven into every single detail.

It’s nearly noon. I’ve been sitting at my desk for nearly two hours. I’m reading about different strains of amaranth, pollination and seed saving. I’m reading about carrots and nutrient density in varied colors. I switch gears in search of an organic solution for the blight that is attacking our tomatoes and am nearly undone with excitement when, in the process, I also find a hearty handful of ideas of how we might get rid of the pests that are eating our cabbage and kale as well.

This morning, I went out to the garden in the light of the rising sun and again, later, to share my discoveries with Simon, our Joy Collective employee whom I work alongside in the garden. I was exhausted. Late to find sleep and early to rise. This place requires all of me. My fatigued state of mind made things seem more cluttered than usual. It made things shift shapes to look worse than they actually are. My walk in the garden felt discouraging. Blight, leaf eating pests and even rats stealing our vining plants in the night. The devil snickers at my tiredness and his success in causing me to notice all the threats from every angle. I always thought that northern Minnesota gardening was one of the most difficult places to grow food. Turns out I was wrong. I was so naïve. Despite being well traveled, my hands had not spent much time in dirt other than my own. Our rich glacial soils and cold winters that eradicate so much of what we struggle to keep at bay here in Uganda was a blessing that I never fully understood while racing those all-too-short growing seasons. This tropical environment gives forth a never-ending supply of challenges. The persistent heat of the tropics is just as unforgiving as any amount of snow and ice that my former environment had to offer. This place is designed to devour itself.

Whatever the case, my exhaustion was causing me to see things in ways that aren’t really true. The pest issue isn’t that bad and, honestly, most of the vining plants can still be replanted, even if for the third time. As for the blight, that story remains to play itself out, but I actually have more tomato seeds than I know what to do with and, with every challenge that arises, a massive amount of learning happens right along with it.

As for the wave of discouragement that had just washed over me, what I had on my hands was not a case of unredeemable failure, rather the strange and unpredictable run-off of grief, a backfill of emotion I had either experienced or escaped in the day before. Perspective is shifty.

I decided to go back to the house with the intention of allowing myself some rest. Since moving to Uganda, I find the benefits of rest to be both obvious and profound. I told Simon that I would return to the garden later with more encouragement. This place isn’t just teaching me about pest management in the garden, but also how to tend to what rises up within me, too. There is more than one way that this place will devour you, if you let it. My morning rest ended up taking the form of pouring over books and then getting too excited to sit still once I found myself fully footing down a rabbit trail of solutions.

At the moment, I sip tea from a fragile, but beautiful cup that I purchased yesterday. As I lift it to my lips to take a sip, it smells of smoke, the scent of a wood-fired kiln. I linger, enjoying the way the process of its creation is somehow infused into its very being. I doubt the cup will last long. It also smells of clay, a consequence of being fired at low temperatures. I don’t care. I’ll enjoy it thoroughly as long as it lasts with hopes that it holds its earthy smell no matter how many times it’s washed. The cup was a gift to myself. Something like a birthday gift, but different. The whole day was somehow a small act of quiet celebration. Three years now, Carl has been in Heaven. Three years since the day that, standing at the table in the swirling motion of Carl’s family’s kitchen, I gave my life to God. Carl and I both died that day. And then birthed into something entirely new. It has been the hardest three years of my life. But yesterday was less about my sadness than I expected. It was, instead, a tenderhearted day of quiet celebration. It was a day of beauty and friendship and fellowship. In deep ways, my day filled with gorgeous hearted people in moment after moment that I never even planned for. I made it through the day that I had so thoroughly dreaded.

As if yesterday could somehow be a birthday, I realize that this year ahead will be filled with something softer. The dark cave of grief that I’ve made my home out of for so long is asking to be tended to. God Himself has been whispering ever so gently into my very being. He tells me to carve out space and with that thought I notice the warmth of a small fire where it is darkest. It glows golden. I tend to my surroundings in a peaceful and loving way. Not hurried. Even my heart feels soft. Love fills the space, transformed. I open up my arms to allow in the prayers of those in pain. Somehow there is no end to how much can be gathered in. This soft, glowing cave, somewhere in the mountains of my heart, becomes a healing space not just for me, but for all who are drawn there.

I go back to the garden. With bare hands, I spread ash around the leafy plants, a circle of protection. The ash feels like death, but added to the garden it creates life. I enter into a new time and space, one which God has had waiting for me all along. Even this, right now. I give myself to it fully.

Seed Commitment.

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I’ve been slowly bringing seeds to Africa for just over a year now. I’ve been stock-piling, preparing, and mostly looking toward the great potential that awaits us. They are incredible seeds that can’t be found here, at least not easily. They are mostly heirlooms, including some unusual varieties. I brought with me seeds from all over the world: Guatemala, India, Thailand, France, Italy, Mexico, America and beyond. For the most part, they are seeds that will hopefully survive and thrive in a tropical environment, but some of our plantings will be purely experimental. Some seeds were purchased from specialty seed companies in the United States. Others were gifted to me by farmers, friends and family. I have several goals with these seeds, the most important being to MULTIPLY that which we’ve started with. My old farmer friend, Wild Bill, once told me, “If you don’t multiply, eventually you’ll die.”

Wild Bill comes from a time and place when, in order for your family to survive, you had to know how to raise your own food. If the cows or chickens or goats got eaten up or died before they had calves or chicks, well…eventually you were left with a whole lot of nothing. The same was true for the vegetable seeds. Neglect to save seeds and you’d be empty handed when it came time to plant the next season. These days, especially in the developed world, we don’t need to multiply anything except hopefully the numbers in our bank accounts. Or so we think.

In some ways, Africa is as old as time itself. Definitely older and, in a lot of ways, less sophisticated than even Wild Bill’s earlier twentieth century American experiences. In rural (and even urban) Uganda, the old ways of doing things still hold true when it comes to surviving in an economy that’s been left shattered by so much corruption, war and disease. Mix these ingredients with over-population and a serious lack of resources, education and social services and, in a very real way, you’ve got an empty-handed mess on your hands.

And so, these seeds aren’t just seeds. They are the potential for life, health, and income. They are food for a lot of people I know and love. Some of whom are dangerously close to a precipice of, literally, starving to death. These seeds aren’t hybrid or GMO. Their ability to multiply isn’t reliant on whether or not a person has the money or ability to buy more from a company whose greed has found a way to control one of the earth’s most precious gifts. In a sea of monocrops, the seeds I’ve carried with me to Africa hold a millennium of diversity.

These seeds play a role in the bigger picture of our survival as a planet, but even more specific to my role in this new journey is that they are the tiny pod-shaped coins that will hopefully make a difference in the lives of people whose names I know and whose children I love. To me, this is personal.

A little over a week ago, we planted our first seeds. It was a deep act of faith. There have been a lot of uncertainties in so many aspects of this work and especially in building a new life here in Uganda. The potential impermanence of it all has, at times, been staggering. One day I realized that God was giving me the opportunity to decide for myself what I want. Did I want to stay and invest myself in this particular property and at this time? He told me that, if I wanted to remain, I had to show Him by planting those precious seeds. Admittedly, I had been holding off. I was afraid that if I planted the seeds, something might go wrong and I wouldn’t see them grow into maturity. If that happened, all that seed collecting, dreaming and planning would somehow become a huge loss. There were a lot of reasons to hold off on planting. And yet, in God’s straightforward invitation to decide for myself, I knew with my whole being that my future was being decided by this one small act of faith. Of course, God knew all along what I would choose. But for the first time since Carl died, I felt myself making a decision from my own personal preference. It was a powerful moment. The sky became brighter when I realized from this new vantage point that what I wanted and what God was doing, were one in the same thing. A seamless, brilliant match. When I surrendered my life to God, I did so fully, completely. And now, here I was standing at the edge of a future in which God was giving me my freedom in the deepest possible ways.

I planted those seeds. And when I did so, I planted my faith firmly in a future that God Himself planned for me before I was even born. Perhaps a million times over, grief will be turned into life. May life be multiplied. May despair be continuously turned into joy. The day I made the decision to plant those seeds is the day that God gave me a freedom like I have never before known. It’s funny how the decision to root myself to this place is exactly the thing that has given me wings.

Thank you, Abba, for letting me find my way by first setting me free. You know my heart. Since the beginning of time…you’ve known. You’ve always, always known.

And there shall be blessings. Letting images tell their own story.

“Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.'” ~Genesis 1:29

The Parable of the Sower
“He replied, “The knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, ‘Though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.’ Now this is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God.” ~Luke 8:11

“A seed is a doorway between the life of the old plant and its gift to the new plant. Our teachers are the plants. They teach us that we have to be able to sacrifice something of ourselves in order to give something to the next generation.”

*Photos from our most recent seed saving, planting and propagation workshop in the mountains of Eastern Uganda. There is no greater Joy. My heart: http://www.theJOYcollective.org