by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

Plum blossom season!

Spiritual Touchstone

Depending on where you live, it may be the first breath of spring. Where we are, in the East Bay, it’s been in the windy, sunny 70s the last week — nearly summer. (Thanks global warming. Okay not really, rain please?) In any case, it’s a good time of year to fertilize your garden. If you’d like a primer on how to fertilize, here you go: Garden Fertilizer Basics

To be honest, fertilizing intimidates me. I have this weird aversion to it. I wasn’t really sure why; it is, after all, good for the plants, good for the ecosystem. I know I should be fertilizing my own garden, but I can’t seem to drum up any enthusiasm for it, when really all it is is feeding your plants.

And then I realized: I am terrible at remembering to feed myself, so why should it be any different for my plants?

My life is really busy — I have two kids, work, friends, community. It feels like everyone needs something from me all the time. If the kids aren’t shouting, the cats are. And if everyone’s quiet, a friend is texting or my mom is calling. I love my community, but wow, does it consume my time and resources. As a consequence of that, self care can sometimes (often) go out the window.

The old adage of “Put your own mask on first” comes up a lot for me, but it feels trite when so many other peoples’ needs are greater than mine. My therapist admonished me this week though and reminded me that if I burn out, I’m actually going to be less available, less able to care for those who need it. So the question becomes: what next?

“How can we fertilize our own experience so that our future becomes sustainable?”

How do we take care of ourselves so that we can continue to sustainably show up for our communities?

For me, that looks like:

• Saying no a lot more often. I am quick to raise my hand for things, without thinking about the true cost associated with it. I need to carefully tend my own resources with an eye to sustainability.

• Rest. I often get frustrated when I want to just nap or read or watch something of no substance, but those activities replenish me.

• Spend my time with folks that uplift me, rather than drain me. Everyone’s going through it and certainly, I want to be helpful to people I care about, but I can’t continue to have folks suck me dry with their unmanaged drama.

“What does fertilizing your future look like? How will you tend to your garden of self in 2022?”

by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

Image Credit: Jason Hickey

Spiritual Touchstone

As the drought in the west continues, it’s hard not to feel a lot like the land: dry, cracked, discouraged.  The wildfires make it all worse: less trees, less shade, less ground cover.  It’s all just feeling very parched out there, and internally too, as the pandemic goes on and on.

After the call went out to conserve water, I started researching dry farming as a way to understand how to keep my garden going and what I might need to do to strengthen it against more frequent droughts.

Dry farming is “a low-input, place-based approach to producing crops within the constraints of your climate. As we define it, a dry-farmed crop is irrigated once or not at all.”

Basically, you let the rain do the work, and don’t water through the rest of the season.  How do you do that?  “Dry farmers try to select a site with deep soil and good water-holding characteristics and then utilize a suite of practices to conserve soil moisture for crop growth. Some of the practices that support dry farming include: early soil prep and planting; selecting drought tolerant, resistant or early-maturing cultivars; lower planting density; cultivation or surface protection to prevent crusting and cracking of soil surface; diligent weed control; and improving soil health and water-holding capacity with practices such as cover cropping, rotation, and minimizing soil disturbance.”

This week, I yanked out the last of my tomato and cucumber plants that were pretty much done, and soon will be planting my cover crops for the vegetable beds.  As I wrestled with the overgrown tomato vines, I was thinking about how we can sow our own resilience to better make it through the lean times.

“Just like dry farmers put in a lot of work so their crops can survive the dry, hot season, we can prepare our minds, hearts, and souls to get through our difficult seasons as well. ”

We can yank out the weeds: the old stories, the not-great habits, and the old coping mechanisms that no longer serve us.  We can sow cover crops that help us retain moisture in the fertile soil of our hearts: creativity, meditation, friendships, community, and service to causes we care about.  We can cultivate the garden of ourselves to be tolerant, resilient, and able to not only survive, but thrive in this season of our lives.

And if we can’t do that, we can ask for help.  What needs pruning or weeding in your life?  Where do you need help cultivating?  What are you going to sow this week?

by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

In Our Community

Image: StateOfIsrael

It’s the worst drought we’ve seen for years here in California and in the west overall, and I’ve been thinking about how to reduce my personal water usage. Granted, the individual can only do so much, but together, we can make a collective difference.

Surprisingly, some of the methods to reduce water use are a little counter-intuitive, but let’s start with the ones that are obvious:

• Shorter showers. Turn off the water when shaving, time yourself (I like to play music, and when I know two medium songs are done, so is my shower), use 2-in-1 products to cut down shampooing time.

• Reduce landscaping water. Use drip irrigation instead of sprinklers, plant drought-resistant plants, reduce or get rid of your lawn.

• More efficient laundry. Only doing laundry with a full load, and using high-efficiency washing machines if you can.

• Better dishwashing. Most dishwashers these days are high-efficiency, and even if they’re not, they use water MUCH more efficiently than handwashing dishes. Reduce or eliminate hand-washing.

Now for things you might not expect:

• Lower your electricity usage, and switch to renewable energy - electricity production in California requires a lot of water, and water requires a lot of energy.

• Eat less meat, particularly red meat. Do you know what food has the largest global water footprint? Beef. It takes approximately 1,847 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef — that's enough water to fill 39 bathtubs all the way to the top.

• Move away from high water use crops. The biggest water use crop in California is alfalfa, which is used to feed livestock, but after that, it’s almonds and pistachios, and then rice.

• Advocate for high water use crops to be grown in other parts of the country where there is no drought. The Midwest is full of commodity grain, but could grow many other things. Get involved with The Farm Bill and advocate for diversification of crops across the country and supporting farmers.

Together we can make change and help turn things around, making California and the west a more sustainable place to live. The only way we’ll get through the upcoming crises is together.