Common people ought to dig

The first time I ate something fresh from the dirt I was standing in a chilly community garden in northern Manhattan tucked behind a public school parking lot and a dilapidated boat house full of illicit activity. It was arugula in three neat rows. They were tiny, what fancy people call “microgreens.” I’d call it impatience. That small edible green leaf was begging me to take the bite. I pinched it away from the dirt and put it in my mouth. It popped around my tongue with some pizzazz. Green tasted really fucking good. I was hooked. By the time August rolled around and I picked tomatoes still warm with the hot sun seemingly in mid-miraculous photosynthesis I was totally enraptured with what seemed to be more of a religious experience than “garden education.” How could this kind of shit not be in the catechism?

I learned to garden in New York City. I learned about fresh picked vegetables. I learned about community gardens hemming neighborhoods in all corners of the city. I learned about the sweetness of dirt under my fingernails. All of this while in one of the world’s most populous urban areas. Amidst smog, lunatics, congestion, and noise I learned about the beauty of purple eggplant blossoms. I watched community gardeners full of wisdom and knowledge tend their plots to a lush riot of green. Almost all the gardeners I met worth their ilk were immigrants whose work in the dirt and over the stove was steeped in a sort of cultural knowledge that I had never known where I grew up. The way those gardeners tended their plants and made their food was something deep in their roots, an entire way of life. Their actions showed that they believed these things: 1) land should yield things that are delicious and pretty. 2) Food should be delicious, pretty, and shared. 3) All these things should be done well, with attention and care. This fucking rocked my little suburban turfy world.
Land fit into a different sort of paradigm. Yes, most of the land of New York City is devastatingly covered with concrete, pounded under tall buildings, and smothered with toxic substances. However, land available to cultivate is something else entirely. It is much too valuable to be a lawn. Raised beds in community gardens popped up offering a chaotic flow of color, leaves, beauty, and deliciousness. I had never even seen a vegetable garden until I lived in NYC (I have no fucking idea how my soul survived such tragedy). I once saw corn growing in the narrow strip of land between the curb and sidewalk in my neighborhood in Queens. This land didn’t “belong” to someone. It wasn’t private land where the owner could yell at you for walking on the grass. It was recreated into what someone wanted it to be. Someone with seed, some time, and garden love came along to a small piece of dirt and did with it what they wanted. They saw possibility, usefulness, and meaning in a barren spot of land. This act connected people to their history, culture, identity, and to each other. No grass here. And no fucking hedging.



In 1649 in England, Gerard Winstanley appealed to the government writing that “the common people ought to dig, plow, plant, and dwell upon the Commons without hiring them or paying rent to any” (uh, fucking awesome, yes?). Yes, you are totally right Mr. Winstanley, I ought to search out those commons and dig. I now live in the outskirts of Boston in a rather urban but somewhat suburban landscape. Unlike a super-urbanized environment, there is some land to spare for horrid “public” landscapes around corporate-like environments (ever see a McDonald’s garden? How about condo landscaping? It’s fucking vile.) But there are also urbanized abandoned spaces seemingly barren and threatening in appearance.
I’d like to conquer both with my trowel and seeds. There is a seemingly abandoned space down the street from where I live between a sidewalk and fenced in machine shops and industrialized offices. No one maintains it. It has a grey and rather neglected look to it that begs to be adopted with some sunshiny energy. I imagine a plot of sunflowers would be much appreciated by passing motorists. It’s current neglect seems to guarantee they might be left alone to thrive to a ripe old sunseedy age. There are a number of manicured areas around apartments and fast food restaurants I’m anxious to invade (my apartment building, McDonald’s, my former apartment building which was practically an exit off the mass pike and a stop on the commuter train, the city’s center green. There is one nightmarish condo brain-control compound in the neighboring town I’d love to dig up, but it’s a little far for me to maintain. But, a one time fling to frustrate the dandelion-sniper landscapers who think grass and pine trees are good companions is really tempting. Even if the plantings I leave are quickly removed by landscapers, I’d be happy to simply disturb the space with something more organic and rebellious than the excessive hygiene of well-trimmed yew bushes.

Then there is that wonder when you don’t even have to dig. You don’t have to plow. You don’t have to nothing. You just forage. Nature is a really fucking good farmer. All ya gotta do is harvest. I don’t know if you’ve ever foraged, but it’s fucking awesome. I always feel like I’m barely getting away with something. And the something I’m getting away with is tons of mulberries. And dandelions. And sorrel. And purslane. Oh, and burdock root too. It’s a blast and it’s delicious. Public lands are full of food that people don’t know how to recognize as lunch. Naturalized areas, parks, medians, public(ish) gardens, other people’s gardens (some weridos may thank you if you pulled out all the dandelions from their yard) are full of edibles. People pass over these plants thinking they are weeds (fucking purists), assume they are poisonous (paranoid plant-fearers), or don’t think of them at all (grocery store sluts). Food unfamiliar to the produce-aisle-eye is just beyond what most would expect of food. Get a good guide to wild edibles (there are a ton out there and go nuts. As a forager (a.k.a.: badass) the land again becomes a place of imagination, possibility, and deliciousness no matter whose land it is. Claims are held by bird, forager, and decomposing earth alike. Foraging allows me to become more intimate with the wildness of the land around me. It’s a wild, thorny, inconvenient, adventuring, muddy way to connect to the land. When foraging try to fit into your land’s ecology (sounds cool, yeah?). Don’t take too much. Try not to disturb. It is land for all; don’t make it land only for you.